Tennyson and His Friends Part 21

During this visit Tennyson, who suffered sometimes from nervous depression, said more than once that he envied my father's life of active and incessant goodness. In the man who at the height of his fame could experience and express such a feeling, there was still something of the heart of a good child--its simplicity, its humility, its "wanting to be good."

In June 1867, Aldworth--called at first Greenhill--appears in the letters.

Emily Tennyson writes to my mother: "We have agreed to buy thirty-five[48]

acres of beautifully situated land. It is a ledge on a hill nearly 1000 feet high, all copse and foxgloves almost, and a steep descent of wood and field below; the ledge looking over an immense plain, and backed by a hill slightly higher than itself." I quote what follows because it shows how simple had been the Freshwater life. "The order is gone for a small sociable landau. This seems so luxurious that I am afraid I am perversely more ready to cry than to laugh over it."

Aldworth was meant to be a small house, but somehow it grew to be a large one. The Tennysons' own design for it was followed in the main by Mr.

(afterwards Sir James) Knowles. The winds and rains of the great height have weathered stone and slate until the house and the bal.u.s.trade of its wide terrace seem to have stood there two centuries, rather than not yet half of one. The planting of the Italian cypresses along the edge of the terrace was the Poet's own particular fancy. It is strange that they should have grown so grandly on this exposed English hill-side. The darkness of their foliage, the severity of their lines, put an accent on the visionary beauty of the immense view which lies spread below and beyond them. There is the Suss.e.x Weald, so far down that its hills and dales appear one plain, the range of the South Downs, rising yonder to Chanctonbury Ring, dropping nearer to a chalky gap which lets in the distant glitter of the sea. Hindhead, the Surrey ranges, Windsor Forest--the list grows too long of all that may be seen from Aldworth terrace, and from the heathy height above, whence seven counties are said to be visible. For my part, when looking from such heights, over the great everlasting marriage festivals of Earth and Sky, it is with difficulty, almost with reluctance, that I bring myself to connect them with the map.

All things grow with a peculiar luxuriance on Black Down, and the immediate surroundings of the house were beautiful from the first, though the garden with its flowers and trees has added a beauty to those natural ones. The Suss.e.x country was lonely forty years ago, and the Poet could pace his heathery ridge, brooding upon his verse, untroubled by any risk of human intrusion.

My parents and their family came to know and love this new home as well as the old one at Freshwater, and although it represents a later stage of Tennyson's life, the interest of the house is almost as great. The fine Laurence portrait is there, besides the admirable Watts portrait of the Poet's wife, and that of his sons as boys. And many other pictures and things of interest and value have acc.u.mulated within its walls.

In his old age a change, easily understood, came over the old Bard. He lost his shyness of "the crowd," and seemed thoroughly to enjoy his glimpses of London society. He never visited us at Oxford, but when my father succeeded Dean Stanley at Westminster, my parents once more enjoyed some delightful visits from him. He was there in company with his eldest son and his daughter-in-law, on the occasion of his taking his seat in the House of Peers. Then and at other times there were memorable meetings of great men--Gladstone and others--with the Poet, in the fitting frame of the ancient Deanery.

My mother writes of Tennyson in 1888, after thirty-three years of friendship, "he grows more and more unselfish and thoughtful for others."

She noted how the self-absorption and melancholy of his earlier years pa.s.sed away in the calm sunshine of his old age.

The pa.s.sing years had brought changes to others. The brilliant little scholar with the tongue which had once held in check the boldest offender against the laws of G.o.d or the Latin Grammar--although it never smote to defend or advance himself--had ripened into the constant peacemaker; one of the gentlest and humblest of that little band, who really walk in the footsteps of their Master Christ, and make those footsteps clearer for ever to all whose privilege it has been to live in their intimacy.

At length the day came when, full of years and honours, the famous singer, the Great Voice of Victorian England, lay silenced in the solemn shade of Westminster Abbey, with the clamour of London about him instead of the roar of his sea. It was his old friend, he who had walked and talked with him those long hours of the summer day and night thirty-seven years before, who p.r.o.nounced the last blessing above his grave. And now that friend also sleeps, as it were, in the next room.

NOTES ON CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON

By the late MASTER OF BALLIOL (PROFESSOR JOWETT)

Absolute truthfulness, absolutely himself, never played tricks.

Never got himself puffed in the newspapers.

A friend of liberty and truth.

Extraordinary vitality.

Great common sense and a strong will.

The instinct of common sense at the bottom of all he did.

Not a man of the world (in the ordinary sense) but a man who had the greatest insight into the world, and often in a word or a sentence would flash a light.

Intensely needed sympathy.

A great and deep strength.

He mastered circ.u.mstances, but he was also partly mastered by them, _e.g._ the old calamity of the disinheritance of his father and his treatment by rogues in the days of his youth.

Very fair towards other poets, including those who were not popular, such as Crabbe.

He had the high-bred manners not only of a gentleman but of a great man.

He would have wished that, like Shakespeare, his life might be unknown to posterity.

_Conversation._

In the commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. He had abundance of fire, never talked poorly, never for effect. As Socrates described Plato, "Like no one whom I ever knew before."

The three subjects of which he most often spoke were "G.o.d," "Free-Will,"

and "Immortality," yet always seeming to find an (apparent) contradiction between the "imperfect world," and "the perfect attributes of G.o.d."

Great charm of his ordinary conversation, sitting by a very ordinary person and telling stories with the most high-bred courtesy, endless stories, not too high or too low for ordinary conversation.

The persons and incidents of his childhood very vivid to him, and the Lincolnshire dialect and the ways of life.

Loved telling a good story, which he did admirably, and also hearing one.

He told very accurately, almost in the same words, his old stories, though, having a powerful memory, he was impatient of a friend who told him a twice-repeated tale.

His jests were very amusing.

At good things he would sit laughing away--laughter often interrupted by fits of sadness.

His absolute sincerity, or habit of saying all things to all kinds of persons.

He ought always to have lived among gentlemen only.

Of his early friends (after Arthur Hallam) FitzGerald, Spedding, Sir John Simeon, Lushington--A. T. was enthusiastic about them.

Spedding very gifted and single-minded. He spent his life in defending the character of Bacon.

TENNYSON, CLOUGH, AND THE CLa.s.sICS

By HENRY GRAHAM DAKYNS

You ask me to write a little paper for you on my reminiscences of Farringford, the Pyrenees, and, later, Aldworth; and, although I am still beset by something of the old horror of biography which so obsessed me when I had the chance that I religiously abstained from taking notes at the time, I cannot refuse the opportunity you offer me of having my say also about your father and mother, and certain others whose friendship was and is so precious to me in its affection, and their image ineffaceable.

To your cairn of memories I wish to add my pebble. I might seem lacking in affection otherwise, and that would be to do myself an injustice, and yourselves, your father and mother, an injury, that of seeming insensible to their true worth. _Semper ego auditor tantum? Nunquamne reponam?_

This then is, if somewhat meagre, a faithful record of what I recollect.

To avoid repet.i.tion and for reverence' sake, I shall speak of Lord and Lady Tennyson as Him and Her, and of yourselves, my two pupils, by your names. If I have occasion to mention myself (your old tutor), I will use the symbol [Greek: D], the first letter of [Greek: Dakunidion], which, being interpreted, is "Little Dakyns," by which name your father spoke of me, at least on one occasion.