Tennyson and His Friends Part 53

[5] This is written of the Lincolnshire coast.

[6] This taken from what he saw from the cliffs over Scratch.e.l.l's Bay near the Needles in the Isle of Wight.

[7] Afterwards married to Judge Alan Ker, Chief Justice of Jamaica.

[8] At Mablethorpe there was no post at all, and Alfred tells how he was indebted to the m.u.f.fin man for communication with the outer world.

[9] His wife.

[10] Mother of Lady Boyne.

[11] [The unpublished letters from Frederick Tennyson, quoted throughout the chapter, were written either to my father, or to my father's friend, Mary Brotherton, the novelist. The lives of my uncles Frederick and Charles were so much interwoven with the lives of some of my father's friends that I have ventured to insert this account of them here.

Moreover, these two brothers represent "the two extremes of the Tennyson temperament, the mean and perfection of which is found in Alfred."--ED.]

[12] Unpublished letter to Alfred Tennyson.

[13] Alfred was always telling his brother that Spiritualism was a subject well worthy of examination, but not to be swallowed whole. He had a great admiration for certain pa.s.sages in Swedenborg's writings.

[14] Alfred used to say of the Sonnets that many of them had all the tenderness of the Greek epigram, while a few were among the finest in our language.

[15] The other three were Franklin, Harry, and Tom.

[16] She often used to sing to us "Elaine's song" which she had set to music.

[17] [My father was devoted to Henry Lushington, and p.r.o.nounced him to be the best critic he had ever known. To him he dedicated "In Memoriam."--ED.]

[18] There are also the fine "beardless bust" by Tennyson's friend, Thomas Woolner, R.A., and the earliest "beardless portrait" of him by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Weld.

[19] This was a misunderstanding on the part of FitzGerald.

[20] This account of the talk in the Woodbridge garden has been taken from a letter to me from the present Lord Tennyson.

[21] Sophocles, _Ajax_, 674-5.

[22] This old French paraphrase of Horace, _Odes_, I. xi., FitzGerald was very fond of, and quotes more than once in his letters.

[23] Of the _Conversations with Eckermann_, he said, "almost as repeatedly to be read as Boswell's _Johnson_--a German Johnson--and (as with Boswell) more interesting to me in Eckermann's Diary than in all his own famous works."--_Letters to Mrs. Kemble._

[24] [Some of these sayings appeared in my Memoir of my father.--ED.]

[25] See _Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son_, p. 373.

[26] See _Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son_, p. 352.

[27] "I suppose the worship of wonder, such as I have heard grown-up children tell of at first sight of the Alps."--_Euphranor_, by E. F. G.

[28] Arthur Hallam, Harry Lushington, and Sir John Simeon.

[29] "The Death of none."

[30] ["Ulysses," the t.i.tle of a number of essays by W. G. Palgrave, brother of my father's devoted friend Francis T. Palgrave.--ED.]

[31] 1888.

[32] Garibaldi said to me, alluding to his barren island, "I wish I had your trees."

[33] The tale of Nejd.

[34] The Philippines.

[35] In Dominica.

[36] The Shadow of the Lord. Certain obscure markings on a rock in Siam, which express the image of Buddha to the Buddhist more or less distinctly according to his faith and his moral worth.

[37] The footstep of the Lord on another rock.

[38] The monastery of Sumelas.

[39] Anatolian Spectre stories.

[40] The Three Cities.

[41] Travels in Egypt.

[42] Lionel Tennyson.

[43] In Bologna.

[44] They say, for the fact is doubtful.

[45] Demeter and Persephone.

[46] [This Home was founded at the suggestion of my father, for he and Gordon had discussed the desirability of founding training camps all over England for the training of poor boys as soldiers or emigrants, Gordon saying to him, "You are the man to found them."--ED.]

[47] One of Tennyson's friends asked a cabman at Freshwater, "Whose house is that?" Cabman: "It belongs to one Tennyson." Friend: "He is a great man, you know?" Cabman: "He a great man! he only keeps one man-servant, and he don't sleep in the house!"

[48] Now grown into one hundred and fifty acres.

[49] He used to protest against the misuse of words of mighty content as mere expletives, contrasting "G.o.d made Himself an awful rose of dawn," and the colloquial "young-ladyism," as he called it, of "awfully jolly." (See the _Memoir_.)

[50] And, though I knew him to the end of his days, that interval never seemed to lengthen. [Among Mr. Dakyns's rough notes I find the Greek phrase [Greek: aei pais], with an emphatic reference to "The Wanderer." I know he thought the spirit of him "who loves the world from end to end and wanders on from home to home" was really Tennyson's own.--F. M. S.]

[51] See _Memoir_, ii. 400.

[52] [I think that this riddle was originally made by Franklin Lushington.--ED.]

[53] See _Memoir_, ii. 288.

[54] ii. 284 foll., 293, "Some Criticism on Poets and Poetry"; _ib._ 420 foll., "Last Talks": that wonderful chapter.