A Day with the Poet Tennyson Part 1

A Day with the Poet Tennyson.

by Anonymous.

A DAY WITH TENNYSON.

Tennyson was no recluse. He shunned society in the ordinary London sense, but he welcomed kindred spirits to his beautiful home, with large-hearted cordiality. To be acquainted with Farringford was in itself a liberal education. Farringford was an ideal home for a great poet. To begin with, it was somewhat secluded and remote from the world's ways, especially in the early 'fifties, when the Isle of Wight was much more of a _terra incognita_ than traffic now permits. One had to travel down some hundred miles from town, cross from the quaint little New Forest port of Lymington to the still quainter little old-world Yarmouth--"a mediaeval Venice," the poet called it--and then drive some miles to Freshwater, before one attained the stately loveliness of Farringford embowered in trees.

"Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twilight falling brown All around a careless-ordered garden, Close to the ridge of a n.o.ble down."

"Groves of pine on either hand, To break the blast of winter, stand; And further on, the h.o.a.ry Channel Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand."

_Lines to the Rev. F. D. Maurice._

The interior of the house--a very ancient one--was no less ideal than its outward aspect, "it was like a charmed palace, with green walks without and speaking walls within." And its occupants crowned all--the ethereally lovely mistress with her "tender spiritual face," and the master, tall, broad-shouldered, and ma.s.sive, dark-eyed and dark-browed, his voice full of deep organ-tones and delicate inflections, his mind shaped to all fine issues. "The wisest man,"

said Thackeray, "that ever I knew."

Farringford was the ideal home of the great poet. "A charmed palace with green walks without,"

"Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twilight falling brown All around a careless-ordered garden, Close to the ridge of a n.o.ble down."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Painting by E. W. Haslehust._ FARRINGFORD. ]

Subject to slight inevitable variations, a certain method and routine governed the day of Tennyson. He had definite working-times, indoors and out, and accustomed habits of family life. The morning brought him letters from all parts of England: there was hardly any great man who did not desire to exchange salutations and discuss world-subjects with a thinker so far above the rest. The poet, with the prophetic soul of genius, had always been well in advance of his times.

"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm; Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward, let us range, Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day; Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."

_Locksley Hall._

The daily papers are somewhat late in reaching the Isle of Wight: but the poet could find inspiration even in a source so apparently prosaic as a _Times_ column. He noted down some of those valiant and soul-stirring episodes which go unrecorded save by a pa.s.sing paragraph: and the poem which, perhaps, has held the public fancy longest, the _Charge of the Light Brigade_, was written a few minutes after reading the _Times'_ description of the battle containing the phrase "Someone had blundered."

"Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!' he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

"'Forward, the Light Brigade!'

Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd: Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

"Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and sh.e.l.l, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of h.e.l.l Rode the six hundred.

"Flash'd all their sabres bare, Flash'd as they turned in air Sabring the gunners there.

Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd; Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the sabre stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd.

Then they rode back, but not, Not the six hundred.

"Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and sh.e.l.l, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death, Back thro' the mouth of h.e.l.l, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred.

"When can their glory fade?

O, the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder'd.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade, n.o.ble six hundred!"

_The Charge of the Light Brigade._

A little while after breakfast, Tennyson would retire to his "den" on the top storey, for that "sacred half-hour" devoted to poetical composition, and a.s.sisted by his beloved pipe, during which n.o.body dared disturb him. This den, or study, formed a setting worthy of its inmate. Every inch of wall was covered with portrait, sketches, drawings. Almost every distinguished name of the nineteenth century was in some manner represented here: the poet literally worked surrounded by his friends. And in this congenial atmosphere he devoted himself to that life-long pursuit of his, as he has imaged it in the "Gleam," which "flying onward, wed to the melody, sang through the world."

Whatever respective values a future generation may set upon Tennyson's work, there can be little doubt that he himself considered the _Idylls of the King_, with its inner spiritual meanings, as his greatest work.

"There is no single fact or incident in the Idylls," he said, "which cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory whatever." Hence their appeal to the least mystical reader, through sheer beauty of language and superb pictorial effect. But at the same time he let it be known that his whole story was inherently one of pure symbolism: starting from the suggestion that Arthur represented conscience. This idea is predominant, without undue insistence upon it, in _Guinevere_.

"Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, I, whose vast pity almost makes me die To see thee laying there thy golden head, My pride in happier summers, at my feet.

... Let no man dream, but that I love thee still."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Painting by W. H. Margetson._ GUINEVERE. ]

"Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat There in the holy house at Almesbury, Weeping, none with her save a little maid, A novice: one low light betwixt them burned, Blurred by the creeping mist; for all abroad, Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full, The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face, Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.

There rode an armed warrior to the doors, A murmuring whisper thro' the nunnery ran, Then on a sudden a cry, 'The King.' She sat Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet Thro' the long gallery from the outer doors Rang, coming, p.r.o.ne from off her seat she fell And grovell'd with her face against the floor: There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair She made her face a darkness from the King; And in the darkness heard his armed feet Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice, Monotonous and hollow like a ghost's, Denouncing judgment, but, tho' changed, the King's.

'Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, I, whose vast pity almost makes me die To see thee laying there thy golden head, My pride in happier summers, at my feet.

... Let no man dream, but that I love thee still, Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure We two may meet before high G.o.d, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know I am thine husband--not a smaller soul, Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence.

... But hither shall I never come again, Never lie by thy side: see thee no more-- Farewell!'

And while she grovell'd at his feet, She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck, And in the darkness o'er her fallen head Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.

Then, listening till those armed steps were gone, Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found The cas.e.m.e.nt: 'peradventure,' so she thought, 'If I might see his face, and not be seen.'

And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!