Old Familiar Faces Part 6

"For those who cared to know about his literary history he wrote 'Merlin and the Gleam.' From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin-that spirit of poetry-which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a desire to enn.o.ble the life of the world, and which helped him through doubts and difficulties to 'endure as seeing Him who is invisible.'

Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the valley, In early summers, Over the mountain, On human faces, And all around me, Moving to melody, Floated the Gleam.

"In his youth he sang of the brook flowing through his upland valley, of the 'ridged wolds' that rose above his home, of the mountain-glen and snowy summits of his early dreams, and of the beings, heroes and fairies, with which his imaginary world was peopled. Then was heard the 'croak of the raven,' the harsh voice of those who were unsympathetic-

The light retreated, The Landskip darken'd, The melody deaden'd, The Master whisper'd, 'Follow the Gleam.'

"Still the inward voice told him not to be faint-hearted but to follow his ideal. And by the delight in his own romantic fancy, and by the harmonies of nature, 'the warble of water,' and 'cataract music of falling torrents,' the inspiration of the poet was renewed. His Eclogues and English Idyls followed, when he sang the songs of country life and the joys and griefs of country folk, which he knew through and through,

Innocent maidens, Garrulous children, Homestead and harvest, Reaper and gleaner, And rough-ruddy faces Of lowly labour.

"By degrees, having learnt somewhat of the real philosophy of life and of humanity from his own experience, he rose to a melody 'stronger and statelier.' He celebrated the glory of 'human love and of human heroism'

and of human thought, and began what he had already devised, his epic of King Arthur, 'typifying above all things the life of man,' wherein he had intended to represent some of the great religions of the world. He had purposed that this was to be the chief work of his manhood. Yet the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, and the consequent darkening of the whole world for him made him almost fail in this purpose; nor any longer for a while did he rejoice in the splendour of his spiritual visions, nor in the Gleam that had 'waned to a wintry glimmer.'

Clouds and darkness Closed upon Camelot; Arthur had vanish'd I knew not whither, The King who loved me, And cannot die.

"Here my father united the two Arthurs, the Arthur of the Idylls and the Arthur 'the man he held as half divine.' He himself had fought with death, and had come out victorious to find 'a stronger faith his own,'

and a hope for himself, for all those in sorrow and for universal human kind, that never forsook him through the future years.

And broader and brighter The Gleam flying onward, Wed to the melody, Sang thro' the world.

I saw, wherever In pa.s.sing it glanced upon Hamlet or city, That under the Crosses The dead man's garden, The mortal hillock, Would break into blossom; And so to the land's Last limit I came.

"Up to the end he faced death with the same earnest and unfailing courage that he had always shown, but with an added sense of the awe and the mystery of the Infinite.

I can no longer, But die rejoicing, For thro' the Magic Of Him the Mighty, Who taught me in childhood, There on the border Of boundless Ocean, And all but in Heaven Hovers the Gleam.

"That is the reading of the poet's riddle as he gave it to me. He thought that 'Merlin and the Gleam' would probably be enough of biography for those friends who urged him to write about himself. However, this has not been their verdict, and I have tried to do what he said that I might do."

There are many specialists in Tennysonian bibliography who take a pride (and a worthy pride) in their knowledge of the master's poems. But the knowledge of all of these specialists put together is not equal to that of him who writes this book. Not only is every line at his fingers'

ends, but he knows, either from his own memory or from what his father has told him, where and when and why every line was written. He, however, shares, it is evident that dislike-rather let us say that pa.s.sionate hatred-which his father, like so many other poets, had of that well-intentioned but vexing being whom Rossetti anathematized as the "literary resurrection man." Rossetti used to say that "of all signs that a man was devoid of poetic instinct and poetic feeling the impulse of the literary resurrectionist was the surest." Without going so far as this we may at least affirm that all poets writing in a language requiring, as English does, much manipulation before it can be moulded into perfect form must needs revise in the brain before the line is set down, or in ma.n.u.script, as Sh.e.l.ley did, or partly in ma.n.u.script and partly in type, as Coleridge did. But the rakers-up of the "chips of the workshop," to use Tennyson's own phrase, seem to have been specially irritating to him, because he belonged to those poets who cannot really revise and complete their work till they see it in type. "Poetry," he said, "looks better, more convincing in print."

"From the volume of 1832," says his son, "he omitted several stanzas of 'The Palace of Art' because he thought that the poem was too full. 'The artist is known by his self-limitation' was a favourite adage of his. He allowed me, however, to print some of them in my notes, otherwise I should have hesitated to quote without his leave lines that he had excised. He 'gave the people of his best,' and he usually wished that his best should remain without variorum readings, 'the chips of the workshop,' as he called them. The love of bibliomaniacs for first editions filled him with horror, for the first editions are obviously in many cases the worst editions, and once he said to me: 'Why do they treasure the rubbish I shot from my full-finish'd cantos?'

??p??? ??de ?sas?? ?s? p???? ??s? pa?t??.

For himself many pa.s.sages in Wordsworth and other poets have been entirely spoilt by the modern habit of giving every various reading along with the text. Besides, in his case, very often what is published as the latest edition has been the original version in his first ma.n.u.script, so that there is no possibility of really tracing the history of what may seem to be a new word or a new pa.s.sage. 'For instance,' he said, 'in "Maud" a line in the first edition was 'I will bury myself in _my books_, and the Devil may pipe to his own,' which was afterwards altered to 'I will bury myself _in myself_, &c.': this was highly commended by the critics as an improvement on the _original_ reading-but it was actually in the first MS. draft of the poem."

Again, it is important to get a statement by one ent.i.tled to speak with authority as to what Tennyson did and what he did not believe upon religious matters. He had in 'In Memoriam' and other poems touched with a hand so strong and sometimes so daring upon the teaching of modern science, and yet he had spoken always so reverently of what modern civilization reverences, that the most opposite lessons were read from his utterances. To one thinker it would seem that Tennyson had thrown himself boldly upon the very foremost wave of scientific thought. To another it would seem that Wordsworth (although, living and writing when he did, before the birth of the new cosmogony, he believed himself to be still in trammels of the old) was by temperament far more in touch with the new cosmogony than was Tennyson, who studied evolution more ardently than any poet since Lucretius. While Wordsworth, notwithstanding a conventional phrase here and there, had an apprehension of Nature without the ever-present idea of the Power behind her, Spinosa himself was not so "G.o.d-intoxicated" a man as Tennyson. His son sets the question at rest in the following pregnant words:-

"a.s.suredly Religion was no nebulous abstraction for him. He consistently emphasized his own belief in what he called the Eternal Truths; in an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and All-loving G.o.d, Who has revealed Himself through the human attribute of the highest self-sacrificing love; in the freedom of the human will; and in the immortality of the soul. But he a.s.serted that 'Nothing worthy proving can be proven,' and that even as to the great laws which are the basis of Science, 'We have but faith, we cannot know.' He dreaded the dogmatism of sects and rash definitions of G.o.d. 'I dare hardly name His Name,' he would say, and accordingly he named Him in 'The Ancient Sage' the 'Nameless.' 'But take away belief in the self-conscious personality of G.o.d,' he said, 'and you take away the backbone of the world.' 'On G.o.d and G.o.d-like men we build our trust.' A week before his death I was sitting by him, and he talked long of the Personality and of the Love of G.o.d, 'That G.o.d, Whose eyes consider the poor,' 'Who catereth, even for the sparrow.' 'I should,' he said, 'infinitely rather feel myself the most miserable wretch on the face of the earth with a G.o.d above, than the highest type of man standing alone.'

He would allow that G.o.d is unknowable in 'his whole world-self, and all-in-all,' and that, therefore, there was some force in the objection made by some people to the word 'Personality' as being 'anthropomorphic,'

and that, perhaps 'Self-consciousness' or 'Mind' might be clearer to them: but at the same time he insisted that, although 'man is like a thing of nought' in 'the boundless plan,' our highest view of G.o.d must be more or less anthropomorphic: and that 'Personality,' as far as our intelligence goes, is the widest definition and includes 'Mind,'

'Self-consciousness,' 'Will,' 'Love,' and other attributes of the Real, the Supreme, 'the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, Whose name is Holy.'"

And then Lord Tennyson quotes a ma.n.u.script note of Jowett's in which he says:-

"Alfred Tennyson thinks it ridiculous to believe in a G.o.d and deny his consciousness, and was amused at some one who said of him that he had versified Hegelianism."

He notes also an anecdote of Edward Fitzgerald's which speaks of a week with Tennyson, when the poet, picking up a daisy, and looking closely at its crimson-tipped leaves, said, "Does not this look like a thinking Artificer, one who wishes to ornament?"

Here is a paragraph which will be read with the deepest interest, not only by every lover of poetry, but by every man whose heart has been rung by the most terrible of all bereavements-the loss of a beloved friend.

Close as the tie of blood relationship undoubtedly is, it is based upon convention as much as upon nature. It may exist and flourish vigorously when there is little or no community of taste or of thought:-

"It may be as well to say here that all the letters from my father to Arthur Hallam were destroyed by his father after Arthur's death: a great loss, as these particular letters probably revealed his inner self more truly than anything outside his poems."

We confess to belonging to those who always read with a twinge of remorse the private letters of a man in print. But if there is a case where one must needs long to see the letters between two intimate friends, it is that of Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. They would have been only second in interest to Shakespeare's letters to that mysterious "Mr. W. H." whose ident.i.ty now can never be traced. For, notwithstanding all that has recently been said, and ably said, to the contrary, the man to whom many of the sonnets were addressed was he whom "T. T." addresses as "Mr. W.

H."

But for an intimacy to be so strong as that which existed between Tennyson and Arthur H. Hallam there must be a kinship of soul so close and so rare that the tie of blood relationship seems weak beside it. It is then that friendship may sometimes pa.s.s from a sentiment into a pa.s.sion. It did so in the case of Shakespeare and his mysterious friend, as the sonnets in question make manifest; but we are not aware that there is in English literature any other instance of friendship as a pa.s.sion until we get to 'In Memoriam.' So profound was the effect of Hallam's death upon Tennyson that it was the origin, his son tells us, of 'The Two Voices; or, Thoughts of a Suicide.' What was the secret of Hallam's influence over Tennyson can never be guessed from anything that he has left behind either in prose or verse. But besides the creative genius of the artist there is that genius of personality which is irresistible.

With a very large gift of this kind of genius Arthur Hallam seems to have been endowed.

"In the letters from Arthur Hallam's friends," says Lord Tennyson, "there was a rare unanimity of opinion about his worth. Milnes, writing to his father, says that he had a 'very deep respect' for Hallam, and that Thirlwall, in after years the great bishop, for whom Hallam and my father had a profound affection, was 'actually captivated by him.' When at Cambridge with Hallam he had written: 'He is the only man here of my own standing before whom I bow in conscious inferiority in everything.'

Alford writes: 'Hallam was a man of wonderful mind and knowledge on all subjects, hardly credible at his age. . . . I long ago set him down for the most wonderful person I ever knew. He was of the most tender, affectionate disposition.'"

Lord Tennyson's remarks upon the 'Idylls of the King,' and upon the enormous success of the book have a special interest, and serve to ill.u.s.trate our opening remarks upon the popularity of his father's works.

Popular as Tennyson had become through 'The Gardener's Daughter,' 'The Miller's Daughter,' 'The May Queen,' 'The Lord of Burleigh,' and scores of other poems-endeared to every sorrowing heart as he had become through 'In Memoriam'-it was the 'Idylls of the King' that secured for him his unique place. Many explanations of the phenomenon of a true poet securing the popular suffrages have been offered, one of them being his acceptance of the Laureateship. But Wordsworth, a great poet, also accepted it; and he never was and never will be popular. The wisdom of what Goethe says about the enormous importance of "subject" in poetic art is ill.u.s.trated by the story of Tennyson and the 'Idylls of the King.'

For what was there in the 'Idylls of the King' that brought all England to Tennyson's feet-made English people re-read with a new seeing in their eyes the poems which they once thought merely beautiful, but now thought half divine? Beautiful these 'Idylls' are indeed, but they are not more beautiful than work of his that went before. The rich Klond.y.k.e of Malory and Geoffrey of Monmouth had not escaped the eyes of previous prospectors. All his life Milton had dreamed of the mines lying concealed in the "misty mid-region" of King Arthur and the Round Table, but, luckily for Tennyson, was led away from it into other paths. With Milton's immense power of sensuous expression-a power that impelled him, even when dealing with the spirit world, to flash upon our senses pictures of the very limbs of angels and fiends at fight-we may imagine what an epic of King Arthur he would have produced. Dryden also contemplated working in this mine, but never did; and until Scott came with his Lyulph's Tale in 'The Bridal of Triermain,' no one had taken up the subject but writers like Blackmore. Then came Bulwer's burlesque.

Now no prospector on the banks of the Yukon has a keener eye for nuggets than Tennyson had for poetic ore, and besides 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'Launcelot and Guinevere,' he had already printed the grandest of all his poems-the 'Morte d'Arthur.' It needed only the 'Idylls of the King,'

where episode after episode of the Arthurian cycle was rendered in poems which could be understood by all-it needed only this for all England to be set reading and re-reading all his poems, some of them more precious than any of these 'Idylls'-poems whose familiar beauties shone out now with a new light.

Ever since then Tennyson's hold upon the British public seemed to grow stronger and stronger up to the day of his death, when Great Britain, and, indeed, the entire English-speaking race, went into mourning for him; nor, as we have said, has any weakening of that hold been perceptible during the five years that have elapsed since.

The volumes are so crammed with interesting and important matter that to discuss them in one article is impossible. But before concluding these remarks we must say that the good fortune which attended Tennyson during his life did not end with his death. Fortunate, indeed, is the famous man who escapes the catchpenny biographer. No man so ill.u.s.trious as Tennyson ever before pa.s.sed away without his death giving rise to a flood of books professing to tell the story of his life. Yet it chanced that for a long time before his death a monograph on Tennyson by Mr. Arthur Waugh-which, though of course it is sometimes at fault, was carefully prepared and well considered-had been in preparation, as had also a second edition of another sketch of the poet's life by Mr. Henry Jennings, written with equal reticence and judgment. These two books, coming out, as far as we remember, in the very week of Tennyson's funeral, did the good service of filling up the gap of five years until the appearance of this authorized biography by his son. Otherwise there is no knowing what pseudo-biographies stuffed with what errors and nonsense might have flooded the market and vexed the souls of Tennysonian students. For the future such pseudo-biographies will be impossible.

III.

Notwithstanding the apparently fortunate circ.u.mstances by which Tennyson was surrounded, the record of his early life produces in the reader's mind a sense of unhappiness. Happiness is an affair of temperament, not of outward circ.u.mstances. Happy, in the sense of enjoying the present as Wordsworth enjoyed it, Tennyson could never be. Once, no doubt, Nature's sweetest gift to all living things-the power of enjoying the present-was man's inheritance too. Some of the human family have not lost it even yet; but poets are rarely of these. Give Wordsworth any pittance, enough to satisfy the simplest physical wants-enough to procure him plain living and leisure for "high thinking"-and he would be happier than Tennyson would have been, cracking the finest "walnuts" and sipping the richest "wine" amidst a circle of admiring and powerful friends. As to opinion, as to criticism of his work-what was that to Wordsworth? Had he not from the first the good opinion of her of whom he was the high priest elect.

Natura Benigna herself? Nay, had he not from the first the good opinions of Wordsworth himself and Dorothy? Without this faculty of enjoying the present, how can a bard be happy? For the present alone exists. The past is a dream; the future is a dream; the present is the narrow plank thrown for an instant from the dream of the past to the dream of the future. And yet it is the poet (who of all men should enjoy the raree show hurrying and scrambling along the plank)-it is he who refuses to enjoy himself on his own trembling little plank in order to "stare round"

from side to side.

Spedding, speaking in a letter to Thompson in 1835 of Tennyson's visit to the Lake country, lets fall a few words that describe the poet in the period before his marriage more fully than could have been done by a volume of subtle a.n.a.lysis:-

"I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than any one would have supposed who did not know his own almost personal dislike of the present, whatever it might be."

This is what makes us say that by far the most important thing in Tennyson's life was his marriage. He began to enjoy the present: "The peace of G.o.d came into my life before the altar when I wedded her." No more beautiful words than these were ever uttered by any man concerning any woman. And to say that the words were Tennyson's is to say that they expressed the simple truth, for his definition of human speech as G.o.d meant it to be would have been "the breath that utters truth." It would have been wonderful, indeed, if he, whose capacity of loving a friend was so great had been without an equal capacity of loving a woman.

"Although as a son," says the biographer, "I cannot allow myself full utterance about her whom I loved as perfect mother and 'very woman of very woman'-'such a wife' and true helpmate she proved herself. It was she who became my father's adviser in literary matters; 'I am proud of her intellect,' he wrote. With her he always discussed what he was working at; she transcribed his poems: to her and to no one else he referred for a final criticism before publishing. She, with her 'tender, spiritual nature,' {156} and instinctive n.o.bility of thought, was always by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic counsellor. It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, by her selfless devotion, by 'her faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,' she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of his depression and of his sorrow."

There are some few people whose natures are so n.o.ble or so sweet that how rich soever may be their endowment of intellect, or even of genius, we seem to remember them mainly by what St. Gregory n.a.z.ianzen calls "the rhetoric of their lives." And surely the knowledge that this is so is encouraging to him who would fain believe in the high destiny of man-surely it is encouraging to know that, in spite of "the inhuman dearth of n.o.ble natures," mankind can still so dearly love moral beauty as to hold it more precious than any other human force. And certainly one of those whose intellectual endowments are outdazzled by the beauty of their qualities of heart and soul was the sweet lady whose death I am recording.

Among those who had the privilege of knowing Lady Tennyson (and they were many, and these many were of the best), some are at this moment eloquent in talk about the perfect helpmate she was to the great poet, and the perfect mother she was to his children, and they quote those lovely lines of Tennyson which every one knows by heart:-