Tennyson and His Friends Part 9

Amongst the group of men attached to Lord Tennyson by bonds of early and life-long friendship, and of reverent affection, there is none in whose case the tie is surrounded with more of peculiar interest than Edmund Lushington. Those who in later years were privileged to know the Poet's brother-in-law, and learned to appreciate his character, could well understand the closeness of the sympathy between them.

Edmund Law Lushington was the son of Edmund Henry Lushington, who at one time held important office in Ceylon. The eldest of four[15] gifted brothers, Edmund was born on the 10th of January 1811. The family house was, at first, at Hanwell, from which, some years later, they moved to Park House, near Maidstone. That continued to be the home to which Edmund Lushington returned at every break in his work at Glasgow, and was his permanent residence from his retirement in 1875 until his death on the 13th of July 1893. Young Lushington went to Charterhouse School, and there--as afterwards for a time at Trinity--he had Thackeray as his contemporary. To the friendship thus early begun Thackeray, in long after years, paid a gracious tribute in _The Virginians_, where he cites the Professor at Glasgow and one at Cambridge (W. H. Thompson) as scholars who could more than hold their own against the great names of older days.

As his junior at Trinity, Lushington had at first no acquaintance with Tennyson, and he has himself told us how he first came to know him by sight, when Arthur Hallam declaimed his prize essay in the College Chapel, and Tennyson sat on the bench just below listening intently to the words of his friend. Already Tennyson's name was well known in the University; many of his poems were handed about in ma.n.u.script, and the rank to which they were ent.i.tled was a topic of discussion in College societies. It was only after two years at Cambridge that Lushington's friendship with Tennyson began, and as joint members of the "Apostles'" Society they were thrown into close intercourse. In 1832 Lushington was Senior Cla.s.sic in a notable list, which contained also the names of Shilleto, the famous coach; Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury and Biblical commentator; and William Hepworth Thompson, afterwards Master of Trinity. Six years later, in 1838, he was chosen as Professor of Greek in Glasgow from a field which comprised compet.i.tors so notable as Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke, and Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. As bearing on this we may quote--as a specimen of his quaint and kindly humour--a letter which Lushington wrote to Tennyson from Addington Park, where he was staying on a visit to the Archbishop on October 13, 1880:

On Monday there came on a visit Lord Sherbrooke (R. Lowe).... It was good that yesterday morning one pony chaise held three men who, forty-two years ago, were regarded as rival candidates for the Greek Chair at Glasgow, whereby you will at once admit the cogency of the argument that if I had not become Greek Professor I should probably have been either Archbishop of Canterbury or Chancellor of the Exchequer--possibly both, as no doubt in old times the same back has borne both offices.

This appointment, which banished young Lushington from all the scenes of his early days, did not break the friendship with Tennyson, which had quickly ripened into closest intimacy. In 1840 Tennyson came to visit at Park House,--still Lushington's home during the long summer vacation,--and in 1842 he was present at that festival of the Maidstone Inst.i.tute which is described in the opening verses of "The Princess." The same summer saw the bond drawn tighter by the marriage of Lushington to the Poet's youngest and best-loved sister, Cecilia. It is that marriage which is acclaimed in immortal words in the Epilogue to "In Memoriam," and the tribute there paid to the bridegroom is one which comes home to all who knew him, as a faithful epitome of his personality:

And thou art worthy; full of power; As gentle, liberal-minded, great, Consistent; wearing all that weight Of learning lightly like a flower.

The marriage became one link more in that enduring friendship. Those who knew Mrs. Lushington in later years--when jet-black hair and brilliant clearness of complexion were still marvellously preserved--can easily picture her earlier beauty, which must have had much of that "profile like that on a coin"--which, we are told, was characteristic of Emily, the betrothed of Arthur Hallam. Mrs. Lushington had a fine contralto voice, with something of the music that one felt in the Poet's rich tones.[16]

She was a charming and even a brilliant companion, and, when in good health, enjoyed society. But Glasgow College--as it was then generally called, amidst the murky surroundings of its old site, close to the reeking slums of the New Vennel--was an abode little fitted for one accustomed to warmer suns and more congenial scenes. Mrs. Lushington's health was grievously broken, and the northern chills and fogs told heavily on her spirits. She could rarely join her husband at Glasgow, and it became necessary for him, during the session which lasted through the six winter months, to take a house in Edinburgh and rejoin his wife only for week-ends. Attached as Lushington was to his home and his family, the burden of ill-health that lay heavily on his household was a grievous one.

It caused him much anxiety. Long pain often racked the nerves and dulled the bright spirit of his wife; his only son died after a long and painful illness, and took the light from his life; a daughter followed that son to the grave; and his brother Henry,[17] whose brilliant poetic gifts had been fully proved in the volume of poems ent.i.tled _Points of War_, which he wrote in conjunction with his brother Franklin, died at Paris in the fulness of his powers. He learned, as he writes in one of his letters to Tennyson, that "the roots of love and sorrow are verily twined together abysmally deep." But never once, in all his letters, or in any of his views of his fellow-men, did grief or sorrow drive him into bitterness or cynicism, or make him bate a jot of his calm and reverent fort.i.tude or of his deep and generous charity to his fellow-men.

Throughout that long life, sustained by great thoughts, enriched by wide and varied learning, and blessed by ties of closest affection, Lushington preserved consistently the ideals of the early days, and remained to the last the same strong yet gentle friend, at once generous in admiration and judicial in criticism, that he had been when Tennyson drew his portrait in those immortal lines. We know what were the interests and tastes of these early days. Dean Bradley, in his reminiscences of visits to Park House in 1841 and 1842, tells us how the brothers, and especially the Professor--"Uncle Edmund"--seemed as much at home in the language of the Greek dramatists as if it was their native tongue; and the present writer remembers how, fifty years later, he heard Lord Tennyson recall the quotation from the _Ecclesiazousae_, by which one or other of the brothers, on an occasion at Park House which must have been almost contemporaneous with the Dean's reminiscences, marked the propensity of the ladies of the party to a.s.siduous attendance at Church. Dean Bradley remarks how remote was their outlook on the world from that of the Oxford of his time, dominated by the Tractarian movement. Tolerance, breadth of view, balanced judgment, and deep reverence for all that was n.o.blest in human thought and achievement--these gave the keynote to their minds and energies. Partisanship, sectarian controversy, ecclesiastical disputes, seemed to belong to an alien world.

To those who knew him as Professor at Glasgow the secret of Lushington's influence was not far to seek. He came there into surroundings singularly unlike those of his earlier days, and with little to compensate in their grimy aspect for the beauty of his home and the hallowed a.s.sociations of Trinity. It was not long before he had attuned himself to the scene of his new work, and gathered about him a circle of cherished friends, and had won the respect and regard of the great body of these Scottish students drawn from every cla.s.s. For those who were touched by his enthusiastic love of the Greek language and its literature, his influence was something far deeper. He made no stirring appeals, and followed no startling methods. His perfect courtesy, combined with a firmness which needed no emphasis of manner to a.s.sert itself, sufficed to maintain absolute order amongst those large cla.s.ses whose traditions made them not always amenable to discipline. But for those to whom his teaching was something of an inspiration, there was much more in his personality than this. Consummate dignity, combined with absolute simplicity of manner, a voice rich and melodious in tone, a diction graceful and harmonious but never studied or artificial--these, with a ma.s.sive head and features of almost ideal beauty, made him a figure in the life of the College, deepened the impression of his calm and reverent enthusiasm for all that was n.o.blest in thought and language, and gave to his influence an abiding force throughout the lifetime of his pupils. He offered no ready intimacy, and sought to form no following. But his words, few and well chosen, made themselves felt as pure gold, and a sentence of praise or of sympathy sank into the heart, and brought to life and work something that stirred reverence and enthusiasm. His work planted its root deeply, and sought for no outward recognition. It was only after his long career at Glasgow ended by his retirement in 1875 that what he had achieved in reviving an ideal of Greek scholarship was felt; and it was abiding enough to make him the choice of the students for an honour, rarely accorded to a former Professor--that of election as Lord Rector of the University in 1884. He pursued the even tenor of his way with no thought of self-aggrandizement; only slowly did that absolute modesty, linked with una.s.sailable dignity, make itself felt as a power, radiating into the hearts of others his own illuminating enthusiasm for the ideals of n.o.blest literature.

No poet could have had, bound to him by ties of closest affection, a critic more sympathetic, more reverent, and withal, more faithful in his appreciation. In the genius of Tennyson, he found the central joy and pride of his life; but his judgment was the more valuable, in that it was at all times absolutely sincere:

"You took my criticism on 'Maud' like an angel," he writes in 1856, "which was very good indeed of you. I wish only you could be as glad whenever I thoroughly admire your poems, as I am sorry whenever I cannot."

One reference to a hint of criticism in a letter of June 1857, after the publication of the early Idylls "Enid" and "Nimue (Vivien)" is not without interest. Lushington writes to Tennyson:

I am very much grieved if anything that I wrote distrest you. I said it all in love, and only my love could have prompted me to say it. My tenderness for your fame will not let me be silent when I fear anything that may cast a shade upon it, and few things can be more certain to me than that these two poems, coming out by themselves, would not receive their due of admiration. It would be quite different if they were, as I hope they will be, supported by others of varied matter and interest, giving more completeness and beauty of circular grouping and relation. Such a work I want you to produce, and believe you can, which would surpa.s.s all you have written yet.

The Idylls always had a peculiar interest for Lushington, and he had long encouraged their production. "I am beyond measure delighted," he writes in 1856, "to hear of Merlin and his compeers"; and again in the same year, and in his deepest pangs of anxiety about his boy, he does not forget the wish, "All genial inspiration from home breezes come to 'Enid.'" "Is anything of the Arthurian plan getting into shape?" he writes again in 1859. He was fervent in his admiration of the Dedication to Prince Albert of the new edition of the Idylls in 1862: "Its truth and loftiness and tenderness will be felt in a hundred years as much as now." "Anything of our own Arthur?" he writes again in 1866, "That's the true subject."

His letters (published and unpublished) to Tennyson convey not only the picture of a circle knit by warmest affection, but estimates of others always generous, and sometimes warm with enthusiastic admiration. Carlyle he met at Edinburgh in 1866, and was "struck with the beauty and sweetness of his face; through all its grimness ... there seems to be an infinite freshness of spirit with infinite sadness. His laugh is exactly like a boy's." In 1856 he writes: "Have you seen Browning's new volumes? I have been trying to construe them, and no gold had ever to be digged out through more stubborn rocks. But he is a poet as well as good fellow."

Through all these long years, with their vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, their long partings, and amid varied and widely separate occupations, the friendship remained as fresh as in the early days, an a.s.sociation of common delight in all that was n.o.blest in literature, inspired by a bond of deepest poetic sympathy. To those who knew and venerated Lushington, it might seem that his deep and abiding reverence for the genius of one knit to him, as Tennyson was, by more than a brother's love, had in it something which inspired him in his work, and came in place of all thought of personal ambition. His learning enriched his life, and gave to his work as teacher its perfection and its illumination; but it never prompted him to publication, and he gave nothing to the press under his own name except his opening address as professor, his address to the students as Lord Rector, and a short Life of his friend Professor Ferrier, whose posthumous works he edited. In the one friendship he found the chief solace of his life. In the last letter addressed to Tennyson on the anniversary of his birthday, August 6, 1892--only three months before the Poet's death--Lushington wrote:

May the day be blest to you and all who are dear to you, and may the year bring more blessing as it goes forward, must be the warm wish of all who have felt the knowledge of you and your writings to be among the greatest blessings of their life. Year after year my deep love and admiration has grown, though I have not often of late had the opportunity of expressing it, as we now so seldom meet. But I think you know how largely indebted to you I feel for whatever is best and truest in myself--a debt one cannot hope to repay.

No better picture of the friendship could be given than that enshrined in these words. Lushington survived Tennyson less than a year.

TENNYSON, FITZGERALD, CARLYLE, AND OTHER FRIENDS

By Dr. WARREN, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and now Professor of Poetry

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, Where once I tarried for a while, Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, And greet it with a kindly smile; Whom yet I see as there you sit Beneath your sheltering garden-tree And watch your doves about you flit, And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee, Or on your head their rosy feet, As if they knew your diet spares Whatever moved in that full sheet Let down to Peter at his prayers.

And so I send a birthday line Of greeting; and my son, who dipt In some forgotten book of mine With sallow sc.r.a.ps of ma.n.u.script, And dating many a year ago, Has. .h.i.t on this, which you will take My Fitz, and welcome, as I know Less for its own than for the sake Of one recalling gracious times, When, in our younger London days, You found some merit in my rhymes, And I more pleasure in your praise.

To E. FITZGERALD (_Tiresias and other Poems_, p. 1).

Alfred Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald; _In Memoriam_ and _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_; "The Eternal Yea" and "The Eternal No," "the larger hope"

and "the desperate sort of thing unfortunately at the bottom of all thinking men's minds, made Music of"--few friendships, few conjunctions, personal or literary, could be more interesting or more piquant.

What adds to the interest of the friendship is that it remained so long unknown to the literary or the general world, and is even now, perhaps, only partially appreciated. Yet it subsisted for nearly fifty years. It was close and constant. Though, as time went on, the two friends met less and less often, it was maintained by a steady interchange of letters and messages. The letters were naturally more on FitzGerald's side. Like most, though not perhaps quite all good letter-writers, FitzGerald was a great letter-writer. He was, as he often said, an idle man, and as he also said, he rather liked writing letters, "unlike most Englishmen (but I am Irish)," he added. Indeed, he seemed almost to prefer communication with his friends by letter to personal meetings, though these he enjoyed greatly when brought to the point.

Tennyson and FitzGerald were old friends, born in the same year, the notable year 1809. It is true that though they were at Cambridge together they were not then known to each other, except by sight. "I remember him there well," said FitzGerald, speaking of Tennyson, "a sort of Hyperion."

They had many friendships, acquaintances, a.s.sociations in common. Carlyle, Thackeray, Spedding, Merivale, Trench, W. H. Thompson, J. D. Allen, W. B.

Donne, Brookfield, Cowell, Mrs. Kemble, Samuel Laurence, were known to them both. In their formative years they fell under the same influences, and read many of the same books. It was about 1835 that they became acquainted. They were brought together probably by their common and uncommon friend, James Spedding. They certainly met at his father's house, Mirehouse, near Ba.s.senthwaite Lake, in the spring of 1835.

Tennyson had begun writing "In Memoriam" a little before this, _i.e._ early in 1834, soon after his friend Hallam's sudden death and sad home-bringing in the winter of 1833. He kept it on the stocks, as all know, for some seventeen years. It was published, at first anonymously, in 1850. The secret of its authorship was soon revealed, the poem found immediate acceptance and popularity. It became and has remained one of the most widely read poems in the language. In the meantime Tennyson, though not so famous as "In Memoriam" made him, had become well known through the 1842 volumes.

FitzGerald, on the contrary, was at that time quite unknown, except by his friendships, and to his friends. An Irishman, with the easygoing and _dolce far niente_ qualities which so often temper the brilliant genius of that race, sufficiently provided with means, he was naturally inclined for a quiet and easy, not to say indolent life. He deliberately chose from the first the _fallentis semita vitae_. He had some literary ambitions, and he wrote a few early poems, one or two of rare promise and beauty. One gift in particular was his--not, it is true, always leading him to action, yet in its pa.s.sive or dynamic form constant and abundant almost to excess--loyalty in friendship. Once and fatally, it led him to take or submit to a positive step. He had been the attached friend of Bernard Barton the Quaker poet, the friend of Charles Lamb. When Barton died, from a mistaken sense of duty, FitzGerald not only collected his poems, a task more pious than profitable, but afterward, having meanwhile hesitated and halted too long in offering himself to one who was his real love, married his daughter who was not this. He left her, not indeed as is sometimes said, on the morrow of the wedding, but after separations and repeated attempts--in town and country--at reunion, and lived, as he had done before, alone and somewhat drearily ever afterwards.

Speculation has busied itself about his unfortunate marriage. The briefest but also the best p.r.o.nouncement is probably his own letter written at the time to Mrs. Tennyson:

31 PORTLAND STREET, LONDON, _March 19th, 1858_.

DEAR MRS. TENNYSON--My married life has come to an end: I am back again in the old quarters, living as for the last thirty years--only so much older, sadder, uglier, and worse!--If people want to go further for the cause of this blunder, than the fact of two people of very determined habits and temper first trying to change them at close on fifty--they may lay nine-tenths of the blame on me. I don't want to talk more of the matter, but one must say something.

The old life to which he returned was monotonous, recluse, unconventional.

He spent most of his days in East Anglia, an unromantic region, yet not unbeautiful or wanting a charm of its own; in summer emerging into the sunshine, sitting on a chair in his garden as Tennyson's poem paints him, or on another chair on the deck of his boat, coasting the sh.o.r.es, or sailing up and down the creeks and estuaries with which that country abounds; in winter crouching over the fire, and in either chair smoking and endlessly reading.

In the earlier part of his life he moved about from one home to another, though never very far. In 1860 he settled down at Woodbridge in Suffolk, a pleasant, old-fashioned, provincial town, a sort of East Anglian Totnes, where the Deben, like the more famous Dart, seems to issue from a doorway of close-guarding hills to meet the salt tide, and begins the last stage of its cheerful journey to the open sea.

Just before this, in January of 1859, FitzGerald printed a small edition of a translation of a poem by a Persian astronomer, who died about 1123 A.D. The whole production of this famous piece seemed almost an accident.

FitzGerald had been introduced, some half-dozen years earlier, to the study of Persian by his friend Mr. E. B. Cowell, a brother East Anglian, then in business in Ipswich. Cowell, wishing to pursue his studies further and take a Degree, went in 1851 as a married and somewhat mature student to Oxford, and there, in the Bodleian Library, came on a rare MS. of the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." It is a beautiful little volume, written upon parchment sprinkled with gold dust, in a fine black ink, with blue headings, gold divisions, and delicate Oriental illuminations in blue, gold, and green, at the beginning and the end, and is the earliest known MS. of the poem, dating from 1450 A.D. Of this he made a copy for FitzGerald, who kept it by him, and gradually produced a translation, if not rather a paraphrase. "I also amuse myself," he wrote in December 1853, "with poking out some Persian which E. Cowell would inaugurate me with. I go on with it because it is a point in common with him and enables me to study a little together."

In 1858 he had got his version into a shape somewhat to his mind, and sent it to _Fraser's Magazine_. It was kept for about a year, when FitzGerald asked for it back, and had 250 copies printed early in 1859. He gave away a few and sent the rest to Quaritch.

What ensued is one of the curiosities of literature. FitzGerald did not expect any success or vogue for the work. True, he had toiled at it. "Very few People," he said, "have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have; though certainly not to be literal." And when he had finished he liked "to make an end of the matter by print." But that was all. "I hardly know," he added, "why I print any of these things which n.o.body buys."

Quaritch, as FitzGerald expected, found no sale for _Omar_. He reduced the price from five shillings to one shilling, and then to one penny. Rossetti heard of it through Whitley Stokes, and showed it to Swinburne. They were attracted by it and bought sixpenny-worth. Quaritch raised his price to twopence. They carried off a few more, and the rest, a little later, were eagerly bought up at a guinea or more apiece. Yet the poem remained long known to very few. Quaritch published a second edition, again a small one, nine years later in 1868, and four years later still, a third small edition in 1872, and in 1879 a fourth edition, including Salaman and Absal. The third edition came out just about the time I was going to Oxford as an undergraduate, and it was then that I first heard of it through J. A. Symonds and H. G. Dakyns, who gave me in 1874 a copy which Symonds had presented to him, and which I still possess. Even at Oxford I found only a few, either graduates or undergraduates, who heeded it or knew anything about it. Professor Henry Smith was the only senior I can remember who spoke to me about it, telling me of the previous editions, and praising its merits one day as we turned it over together in Parker's shop. But stealthily and underground it made its way. Edition followed edition, with increasing rapidity. Suddenly it became ubiquitously popular, and it is now certainly one of the best-known pieces of the kind in the language. Messrs. Macmillan put it, in 1899, after a dozen times reprinting it, into their Golden Treasury Series. They had to reprint three times in that year, and this edition has been in constant demand.

But there are ever so many others. The poem has been reproduced in a hundred forms, both in England and America, ill.u.s.trated, illuminated, decorated, annotated. A reprint of the first edition is once more sold for a penny. It has been translated into Latin verse. There is a Concordance to it. A whole literature has sprung up around it. An "Omar Khayyam Club"

was founded in 1892. Pious pilgrimages have been made to the translator's tomb, and Omar's roses planted over it, and verses recited in celebration of both poet and poem.

Of all this immense vogue and success, as his letters show, FitzGerald himself never dreamed. Even when in 1885 Tennyson published, as the dedication of _Tiresias and other Poems_, the lines "To E. FitzGerald,"

the translator of _Omar_ was still, for most readers, "a veiled prophet."

To-day, when the poem has become one of the utterances of the century, lovers of paradox have even ventured to hint that instead of FitzGerald being known as the friend of Tennyson, Tennyson might be known hereafter as the friend of FitzGerald.

FitzGerald is certainly known on his own account. The publication of his letters by his loyal old friend, Dr. Aldis Wright, revealed the man himself to the world. The publication of Tennyson's Life by his son aided the process. Every one will remember the part which FitzGerald plays there, beginning with the meeting at James Spedding's house in the Lakes in 1835, his early enthusiastic admiration, when he fell in love both with the man and his poems, and then his ever-constant friendship, tempered by grumbling, and what appears sometimes almost grudging criticism. He became the friend, it must be remembered, not only of Alfred, but of the whole family, and especially of Frederick, the eldest brother. "All the Tennysons are to be wished well," he says in a letter of 1845. Though he affected to think little of society and hated sn.o.bbery as much as Tennyson or his other friend Thackeray himself, he greatly admired the better qualities of the English gentry, and had even a kindly weakness for their foibles. When Frederick went to live in Italy he wrote: "I love that such men as Frederick should be abroad: so strong, haughty, and pa.s.sionate."

When FitzGerald first met Alfred, the poetic family was still living on at Somersby after their father's death. He went there and fell in love with their mother, and with their mode of life, and with the region, where "there were not only such good seas, but such fine Hill and Dale among the Wolds as people in general scarce thought on." It was characteristic of him that he used to say that Alfred should never have left Lincolnshire.

FitzGerald kept up the friendship mainly, as he did most of his friendships, by letter. In particular, he made a point of writing to the Alfred Tennysons twice a year, once in the summer and again about Christmas time. He addressed himself sometimes to the Poet himself, sometimes to Mrs. Tennyson, and in later days to their eldest son. To Frederick Tennyson, who went to live in Italy, as the readers of Dr. Aldis Wright's volume will remember, he wrote a whole series of letters, many of them very long and full. Of all these letters--to his father, his mother, himself, and his uncle--the present Lord Tennyson has placed a collection in my hands for the purpose of this article. The story of the friendship which it is an attempt to sketch will best be told by pretty full quotations from them. Many of them, and indeed most of those to his father and mother, are now published for the first time.

FitzGerald did not always succeed, and indeed did not expect to succeed, in drawing a reply from Tennyson himself. In a letter written in the summer of 1860 to Mrs. Tennyson he makes a very amusing reference to this, and also throws some light on his own habits: