Part 2

exceptional mind might find room for both. Nothing was more characteristic of the age than the reaction towards medieval ideas, headed by Newman, except the rival and seemingly incompatible gospel of “the railway and the steamship” and all their corollaries. It cannot be said that Tennyson, like Gladstone, found equal room for both ideals in his mind, for until old age had made him mistrustful and querulous he was essentially a man of progress. But his choice of the Arthurian legend for what he intended to be his chief work, and the sentiment of many of his most beautiful minor poems, show what attraction the mediæval spirit also possessed for him; nor, if he was to be in truth the poetical representative of his period, could it have been otherwise. He is not, however, like Gladstone, alternately a mediæval and a modern man; but he uses mediæval sentiment with exquisite judgment to mellow what may appear harsh or crude in the new ideas of political reform, diffusion of education, mechanical invention, free trade, and colonial expansion. The Victorian, in fact,

finds himself nearly in the position of the Elizabethan, who also had a future and a past; and, except in his own, there is no age in which Tennyson would have felt himself more at home than in the age of Elizabeth. He does, indeed, in “Maud” react very vigorously against certain tendencies of the age which he disliked; but this is not in the interest of the mediæval or any other order of ideas incompatible with the fullest development of the nineteenth century. If the utterance here appears passionate, it must be remembered that the poet writes as a combatant. When he constructs, there is nothing more characteristic of him than his sanity. The views on female education propounded in “The Princess” are so sound that good sense has supplied the place of the spirit of prophecy, which did not tabernacle with Tennyson. “In Memoriam” is a most perfect expression of the average theological temper of England in the nineteenth century. As in composition, so in spirit, Tennyson’s writings have all the advantages and all the disadvantages of the golden mean.

By virtue of this golden mean Tennyson remained at an equal distance from revolution and reaction in his ideas, and equally remote from extravagance and insipidity in his work. He is essentially a man of the new time; he begins his career steeped in the influence of Shelley and Keats, without whom he would never have attained the height he did--a height nevertheless, in our opinion, appreciably below theirs, if he is regarded simply as a poet. But he is a poet and much else; he is the interpreter of the Victorian era--firstly to itself, secondly to the ages to come. Had even any poet of greater genius than himself arisen in his own day, which did not happen, he would still have remained the national poet of the time in virtue of his universality. Some personal friends _splendide mendaces_ have hailed him as our greatest poet since Shakespeare. This is absurd; but it is true that no other poet since Shakespeare has produced a body of

poetry which comes so near to satisfying all tastes, reconciling all tendencies, and registering every movement of the intellectual life of the period. Had his mental balance been less accurately poised, he might have been the laureate of a party, but he could not have been the laureate of the nation. As an intellectual force he is, we think, destined to be powerful and durable, because the charm of his poetry will always keep his ideas before the popular mind; and these ideas will always be congenial to the solid, practical, robust, and yet tender and emotional mind of England. They may be briefly defined as the recognition of the association of continuity with mutability in human institutions: the utmost reverence for the past combined with the full and not regretful admission that

The old order changes, giving place to new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways;

the conception of Freedom as something that “broadens down, from precedent to precedent”; veneration for “the Throne unshaken still,” so long as it continues “broad-based upon the People’s will,” which will always be the case so long as

Statesmen at the Council meet Who know the seasons.

Philosophically and theologically, Tennyson is even more conspicuously the representative of the average English mind of his

day. Not that he is a fusion of conflicting tendencies, but that he occupies a central position, equally remote from the excesses of scepticism and the excesses of devotion. This position he is able to fill from his relation to Coleridge, the great exponent of the _via media_: not, as in former days, between Protestantism and Romanism, but between orthodoxy and free thought. Tennyson cannot, indeed, be termed Coleridge’s intellectual heir. As a thinker he is far below his predecessor, and almost devoid of originality; but as a poet he fills up the measure of what was lacking in Coleridge, whose season of speculation hardly arrived until the season of poetry was past. Tennyson was but one of a band of auditors--it might be too much to call them disciples--of the sage who, curiously enough, had himself been a Cambridge man, and who, short and unsatisfactory as had been his residence at that seat of learning,

seemed to have left behind him some invisible influence destined to germinate in due time, for all his most distinguished followers were Cantabs. Such another school, only lacking a poet, had flourished at Cambridge in the seventeenth century, and now came up again like long-buried seeds in a newly disturbed soil. The precise value of their ideas may always be matter for discussion; but they exerted without doubt a happy influence by

Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes.

providing religious minds reverent of the past with an alternative to mere mediævalism, and gently curbing Science in the character she sometimes assumes of “a wild Pallas of the brain.” When the natural moodiness of Tennyson’s temperament is considered, the prevalent optimism of his ideas, both as regards the individual and the State, appears infinitely creditable to him. These are ideas natural to sane and reflecting Englishmen, unchallenged in quiet times, but which may be obscured or overwhelmed in seasons of great popular excitement. The intellectual force of Tennyson is perhaps chiefly shown in the art and attractiveness with which they are set forth; even much that might have appeared tame or prosaic is invested with all the charms of imagination, and commends itself to the poet equally with the statesman. Tennyson is not the greatest of poets, but appreciation of his poems is one of the surest criteria of poetical taste; he is not one of the greatest of thinkers, but agreement with his general cast of thought is an excellent proof of sanity; many singers have been more Delphic in their inspiration, but few, by maxims of temperate wisdom, have provided their native land with such a Palladium.

RICHARD GARNETT.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

[Sidenote: =Somersby Rectory, the birthplace of Alfred Tennyson=

_see page 3_]

Alfred Tennyson was born on Sunday, August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, a village in North Lincolnshire between Horncastle and Spilsby. His father, the Rev. Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby, married in 1805 Elizabeth Fytche, daughter of the Vicar of Louth, in the same county; and, of their twelve children, Alfred was the fourth.

[Sidenote: =Somersby Brook=

_see page 1_]

He always spoke with affectionate remembrance of his early home: of the woodbine trained round his nursery window; of the mediæval-looking dining-hall, with its pointed stained-glass casements; of the pleasant drawing-room, lined with bookshelves and furnished with yellow upholstery. The lawn in front of the house, where he composed his early poem, “A Spirit Haunts the Year’s Last Hours,” was overshadowed on one side by wych-elms, on the other by larch and sycamore trees. On the south was a path bounded by a flower-border, and beyond “a garden bower’d close” sloping gradually to the field at the bottom of which ran the Somersby Brook

That loves To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn In every elbow and turn, The filtered tribute of the rough woodland.

The charm and beauty of this brook haunted the poet throughout his life, and to it he especially dedicated, “Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea.” Tennyson did not, however, attribute his famous poem, “The Brook,” to the same source of inspiration, declaring it was not addressed to any stream in particular.

[Sidenote: =Tennyson’s Mother=

_see page 6_]

Tennyson was exceedingly fortunate in the environment of his childhood and the early influence exercised by his parents. His mother was of a sweet and gentle disposition, and devoted herself entirely to the welfare of her husband and her children. Her son is said to have taken her as a model in “The Princess”; and he certainly gave a more or less truthful description of this “remarkable and saintly woman” in his poem “Isabel”:--

Locks not wide-dispread, Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity.

[Sidenote: =Somersby Church=

_see page 4_]

Tennyson’s father was a man of marked physical strength and stature, called by his parishioners “The stern Doctor.” In 1807 he was appointed to the living of Somersby, and that of the adjoining village of Bag Enderby, and this position he held until his death, on March 16th, 1831, at the age of fifty-two. He was buried in the old country churchyard, where “absolute stillness reigns,” beneath the shade of the rugged little tower. In his time the roof of the church was covered with thatch, as were also those of the cottages in its immediate vicinity.

[Sidenote: =Bag Enderby Church=

_see page 6_]

The livings of Somersby and Bag Enderby were held conjointly, service being conducted at one church in the morning and at the other in the afternoon. Dr. Tennyson read his sermons at Bag Enderby from the quaint high-built pulpit, Alfred listening to them from the squire’s roomy pew.

[Sidenote: =Louth=

_see page 4_]

[Sidenote: =The Grammar School, Louth=

_see page 7_]

At the age of seven Tennyson was sent to school at Louth, a market-town which may fairly lay claim to having been a factor of some importance in his early life. His maternal grandmother lived in Westgate Place, her house being a second home to the young Tennysons. The old Grammar School where Alfred received the early portion of his education is now no longer in existence. Tennyson’s recollections of it and of the Rev. J. Waite, at that time the head-master, were not pleasant. “How I did hate that school!” he wrote later. “The only good I got from it was the memory of the words _Sonus desilientis aquæ_, and of an old wall covered with wild weeds opposite the school windows.”

Tennyson’s first connected poems were composed at Louth, and in this town also his first published work saw the light, appearing in a volume entitled “Poems by Two Brothers,” issued in 1827 by Mr. J. Jackson, a bookseller. The two brothers were Charles and Alfred Tennyson.

After a school career which lasted four years, Alfred returned to Somersby to continue his studies under his father’s tuition. This course of instruction was supplemented by classics at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest, and music-lessons given him by a teacher at Horncastle.

In 1828 Charles and Alfred Tennyson followed their elder brother Frederick to Trinity College, Cambridge. They began their university life in lodgings at No. 12, Rose Crescent, moving later to Trumpington Street, No. 57, Corpus Buildings. Of his early experiences of life at Cambridge, Alfred wrote to his aunt: “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.... 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.”

[Sidenote: =Arthur Hallam (from the bust by Chantrey)=

_see page 8_]

It was at Trinity College that Tennyson first made the acquaintance of Arthur Hallam, youngest son of the historian, whose friendship so profoundly influenced the poet’s character and genius. “He would have been known if he had lived,” wrote Tennyson, “as a great man, but not as a great poet; he was as near perfection as mortal man could be.”

[Sidenote: =The Lady of Shalott=

_see page 10_]

In February 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge without taking a degree, and returned to Somersby, his father dying within a month of his arrival. From this time onward Hallam became an intimate visitor at the Rectory, and formed an attachment for his friend’s sister Emily. In July 1832 Tennyson and Hallam went touring on the Rhine, and at the close of the year appeared the volume of “Poems by Alfred Tennyson,” which contained, amongst others, “The Lady of Shalott,” “The Miller’s Daughter,” “The Palace of Art,” “The Lotos Eaters,” and “A Dream of Fair Women.”

“Well I remember this poem,” wrote Fitzgerald, with reference to “The Lady of Shalott,” “read to me, before I knew the author, at Cambridge one night in 1832 or 3, and its images passing across my head, as across the magic mirror, while half asleep on the mail-coach to London ‘in the creeping dawn’ that followed.”

There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.

The idea of “Mariana in the South” came to Tennyson as he was

[Sidenote: =“Mariana in the South”=

_see page 13_]

travelling between Narbonne and Perpignan. Hallam interpreted it to be the “expression of desolate loneliness.”

Till all the crimson changed, and past Into deep orange o’er the sea, Low on her knees herself she cast, Before Our Lady murmur’d she; Complaining, “Mother, give me grace To help me of my weary load,” And on the liquid mirror glow’d The clear perfection of her face.

[Sidenote: =Stockworth Mill=

_see page 14_]

Of these earlier poems none added more to Tennyson’s growing reputation than “The Miller’s Daughter.” It was probably written at Cambridge, and the poet declared that the mill was no particular mill, or if he had thought of any mill it was that of Trumpington, near Cambridge. But various touches in the poem seem to indicate that the haunts of his boyhood were present in his mind.

Stockworth Mill was situated about two miles along the banks of the Somersby Brook, the poet’s favourite walk, and might very well have inspired the setting of these beautiful verses.

I loved the brimming wave that swam Thro’ quiet meadows round the mill, The sleepy pool above the dam, The pool beneath it never still. The meal-sacks on the whiten’d floor, The dark round of the dripping wheel, The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.

[Sidenote: =The Palace of Art=

_see page 11_]

In the volume of 1832, several stanzas of “The Palace of Art” were omitted, because Tennyson thought the poem was too full. “‘The Palace of Art,’” he wrote in 1890, “is the embodiment of my own belief that the Godlike life is with man and for man.”

Amongst the “marvellously compressed word pictures” of this poem is the beautiful one of our illustration on page 11.

Or in a clear-wall’d city on the sea, Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily; An angel look’d at her.

[Sidenote: =Clevedon Church=

_see page 14_]

On the 15th of September, 1833, Arthur Hallam died suddenly at Vienna. His remains were brought to England, and laid finally to rest in the old and lonely church beside the sea at Clevedon, on January 3rd, 1834.

When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west There comes a glory on the walls.

[Sidenote: =“In Memoriam”=

_see pages 16, 17_]

Tennyson’s whole thoughts were absorbed in memories of his friend, and he continually wrote fragmentary verses on the one theme which filled his heart, many of them to be embodied seventeen years later in the completed “In Memoriam.”

[Sidenote: =The home of Emily Sellwood, at Horncastle=

_see page 19_]

In 1830 Tennyson first met Emily Sellwood, who twenty years later became his wife. Horncastle was the nearest town to Somersby, and in the picturesque old market-square stood the red-brick residence of Mr. Henry Sellwood, a solicitor. The young Sellwoods being much of the same age as the Tennysons, a friendship sprang up between the two families, which in later

[Sidenote: =Grasby Church=

_see page 20_]

years ripened into a double matrimonial relationship. In 1836, Charles Tennyson, the poet’s elder brother, married Louisa, the youngest daughter of Henry Sellwood. In the previous year he had succeeded to the estate and living of Grasby, taking the surname of Turner under his great-uncle’s will. At his own expense he built the vicarage, the church and the schools; and on his death, in 1879, Grasby descended to the Poet Laureate. It was at his brother’s wedding that the bride’s sister, Emily, was taken into church by Alfred Tennyson, but no engagement was recognised between them until four or five years later, and their marriage did not take place until 1850. It was solemnised at Shiplake Church on June 13th, the clergyman who officiated being the poet’s intimate friend, the Rev. Robert Rawnsley.

In the April of the same year, on the death of Wordsworth, Tennyson had been offered the poet-laureateship, to which post he was appointed on November 19th, owing chiefly to Prince Albert’s admiration for “In Memoriam.”

[Sidenote: =Lady Tennyson=

_see page 18_]

Lady Tennyson became the poet’s adviser in literary matters. “I am proud of her intellect,” he wrote. She, with her “tender, spiritual nature,” was always by his side, cheerful, courageous, and a sympathetic counsellor. She shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life and “her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven” helped him in hours of depression and sorrow.

[Sidenote: =Chapel House, Twickenham=

_see page 20_]

Chapel House, Twickenham, was the poet’s first settled home after his marriage, and he resided in it for three years. It was here his “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” was written, and the birth of his son Hallam took place in this house on August 11th, 1852.

[Sidenote: =Farringford, Tennyson’s residence at Freshwater=

_see page 25_]

In 1853, whilst staying in the Isle of Wight, Tennyson heard that the residence called Farringford was to let at Freshwater. He decided to take the place on lease, but two years later purchased it out of the proceeds resulting from “Maud,” which was published in 1855, and Farringford remained his home during the greater part of each year for forty years, and here he wrote some of his best-known works.

“The house at Farringford,” says Mrs. Richmond Ritchie in her _Records_, “seemed like a charmed palace, with green walls without, and speaking walls within. There hung Dante with his solemn nose and wreath; Italy gleamed over the doorways; friends’ faces lined the passages, books filled the shelves, and a glow of crimson was everywhere; the oriel drawing-room window was full of green and golden leaves, of the sound of birds and of the distant sea.”

[Sidenote: =The Glade at Farringford=

_see page 29_]

The grounds of Farringford are exceedingly beautiful and picturesque. On the south side of the house is the glade, and close by

The waving pine which here The warrior of Caprera set.

Referring to Farringford in his invitation to Maurice, Tennyson wrote--

Where far from noise and smoke of town I watch the twilight falling brown All round a careless order’d garden, Close to the ridge of a noble down.

The ridge of the down in question constituted the poet’s favourite walk, and

[Sidenote: =Freshwater Bay=

_see page 30_]

the scenery which he encountered round Freshwater Bay might well have been represented in the opening verse of “Enoch Arden”--

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm; And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands.

[Sidenote: =Freshwater Village=

_see page 30_]

Inland the road leads to the little village of Freshwater, in which the erection of a number of new houses evoked from the poet the lines--

Yonder lies our young sea-village--Art and Grace are less and less: Science grows and Beauty dwindles--roofs of slated hideousness!

[Sidenote: =Alfred Tennyson=

_see pages 22 and 26_]

Opposite these villas stands an ivy-clad house at that time occupied by Mrs. Julia Cameron, the celebrated lady art-photographer, two of whose effective portraits of Tennyson appear on pages 22 and 26.

[Sidenote: =“The Idylls of the King”=

_see pages 15, 21, 27, 31_]

[Sidenote: =Aldworth=

_see page 33_]

In the autumn of 1859, “The Idylls of the King” were first issued in their original form, being four in number: Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere, and from their publication until the end of Tennyson’s life his fame and popularity continued without a check. During the next few years the poet spent much time in travelling, but in 1868 he laid the foundation-stone of a new residence, named Aldworth, about two miles from Haslemere, which became his second home--

You came, and look’d and loved the view Long-known and loved by me, Green Sussex fading into blue, With one grey glimpse of sea.

[Sidenote: =Tennyson’s Lane=

_see page 33_]