Tennyson's Life and Poetry Part 1

Tennyson's Life and Poetry.

by Eugene Parsons.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

There is already an extensive Tennyson literature. Of books relating to the scenes connected with his life and works, are Walters' _In Tennyson Land_; Brooks' _Out of Doors with Tennyson_; also Church's _Laureate's Country_, and Napier's _Homes and Haunts of Lord Tennyson_. There is a ma.s.s of material, both critical and biographical, in Shepherd's _Tennysoniana_; Wace's _Life and Works of Tennyson_; Tainsh's _Study of the Works of Tennyson_; Jennings' _Sketch of Lord Tennyson_; and Van d.y.k.e's _Poetry of Tennyson_. Besides these may be mentioned Brightwell's _Tennyson Concordance_; Irving's _Tennyson_; Lester's _Lord Tennyson and the Bible_; also Collins' _Ill.u.s.trations of Tennyson_.

Valuable help for understanding and appreciating _In Memoriam_ is afforded by the volumes on that poem written by Robertson, Gatty, Genung, Chapman and Davidson. Much interesting information is given in Dawson's _Study of "The Princess"_; Mann's _Tennyson's "Maud" Vindicated_; Elsdale's _Studies in the Idyls_; and Nutt's _Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail_. A collection of Tennyson's songs, set to music by various composers, has been issued by Stanley Lucas and by Harper & Bros.

Several volumes of selections from Tennyson's writings have appeared as follows: _Ausgewahlte Gedichte_, with notes (in German) by Fischer, Salzwedel, 1878; _Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson_, with notes (in Italian) by T. C. Cann, Florence, 1887; _Lyrical Poems of Lord Tennyson_, annotated by F. T. Palgrave; _Select Poems of Tennyson_, and _Young People's Tennyson_, both edited by W. J. Rolfe; _Tennyson Selections_, with notes by F. J. Rowe and W. T. Webb; and _Tennyson for the Young_, edited by Alfred Ainger.

Among school editions of Tennyson's poems, are _The Princess_, with notes by Rolfe, also by Wallace; _Enoch Arden_, with notes by Rolfe, by Webb, and by Blaisdel; _Enoch Arden_, with notes (in German) by Hamann, Leipzig, 1890; _Enoch Arden_, with notes (in French) by Courtois, Paris, 1891; _Enoch Arden_, with notes (in French) by Beljame, Paris, 1891; _Les Idylles du roi, Enoch Arden_, with notes (in French) by Baret, Paris, 1886; _Enoch Arden, les Idylles du roi_, with notes (in French) by Sevrette, Paris, 1887; _Aylmer's Field_, annotated by Webb; _The Two Voices_ and _A Dream of Fair Women_, by Corson; _The Coming of Arthur_ and _The Pa.s.sing of Arthur_, by Rowe; _In Memoriam_ and other poems, by Kellogg.

Innumerable papers on Tennyson and his poetry have been published in newspapers and periodicals. A large number of these reviews and some descriptive articles are contained in the following volumes: Horne's _Spirit of the Age_; Howitt's _Homes and Haunts of British Poets_; Hamilton's _Poets-Laureate of England_; Robertson's _Lectures_; Kingsley's _Miscellanies_; Bagehot's _Literary Studies_; j.a.pp's _Three Great Teachers_; Buchanan's _Master Spirits_; Austin's _Poets of the Period_; Forman's _Our Living Poets_; Friswell's _Modern Men of Letters_; Haweis'

_Poets in the Pulpit_; McCrie's _Religion of Our Literature_; Devey's _Comparative Estimate of English Poets_; Gladstone's _Gleanings of Past Years_; Archer's _English Dramatists of To-Day_; Stedman's _Victorian Poets_; Cooke's _Poets and Problems_; Fraser's _Chaucer to Longfellow_; Dawson's _Makers of Modern English_; Egan's _Lectures on English Literature_; and Ritchie's _Light-Bearers_.

For favorable or unfavorable estimates of Tennyson, the reader is referred to the lectures of Dowden and Ingram in the _Dublin Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art_, and to the collected essays of Brimley, Bayne, Hadley, Ma.s.son, Stirling, Roscoe, Hayward, Hutton, Swinburne, Galton, Noel, Heywood, Bayard Taylor and others.

Some side-lights are thrown on the Laureate in Ruskin's _Modern Painters_; Hamerton's _Thoughts on Art_; Ma.s.son's _Recent British Philosophy_; and Arnold's _Lectures on Translating Homer_. Stray glimpses of the man in his personal relations are found in the _Carlyle and Emerson Correspondence_; f.a.n.n.y Kemble's _Records of a Girlhood_; Caroline Fox's _Memories of Old Friends_; Reid's _Life of Lord Houghton_; and in the _Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald_.

But with all that has been written concerning Tennyson, no monograph, so far as I am aware, has. .h.i.therto appeared which is at once comprehensive and accurate. Mrs. Ritchie's beautiful portraiture of the Laureate, with its touch of hero-worship, lacks a great deal of being a survey of his literary career. No biography of Alfred Tennyson has been published which is worthy the name. For many years students and lovers of the poet encountered difficulty in obtaining full and exact information on the chief events of his life. I undertook to supply this want in the essay ent.i.tled "Tennyson's Life and Poetry."

In the preparation of this paper, I had occasion to consult various periodicals and works of reference. With scarcely an exception, I found the articles on Tennyson in cyclopedias and biographical dictionaries faulty in many particulars. Even the sketches in recent compilations and journals are full of misleading and conflicting statements. I became impressed with the thought that these errors ought to be exposed and corrected. The result was the critique--"Mistakes concerning Tennyson." I gathered my materials from a variety of sources, and always aimed to disengage the truth. I depended largely on Rev. Alfred Gatty, Mrs.

Ritchie, Mr. Gosse, Prof. Palgrave, Prof. Church, Mr. C. J. Caswell, and Dr. Van d.y.k.e as the most trustworthy authorities.

My thanks are due Dr. W. F. Poole, of the Newberry Library, for placing at my disposal an immense collection of bibliographies, catalogues and bulletins of foreign books. I desire also to express my obligations to Dr.

Henry van d.y.k.e, of New York City, for aiding me in my researches.

EUGENE PARSONS.

3612 Stanton Ave., Chicago, _April, 1892_.

TENNYSON'S LIFE AND POETRY.

I.

Alfred Tennyson was born August 6, 1809, in Somersby, a wooded hamlet of Lincolnshire, England. "The native village of Tennyson," says Howitt, who visited it many years ago, "is not situated in the fens, but in a pretty pastoral district of softly sloping hills and large ash trees. It is not based on bogs, but on a clean sandstone. There is a little glen in the neighborhood, called by the old monkish name of Holywell." There he was brought up amid the lovely idyllic scenes which he has made famous in the "Ode to Memory" and other poems. The picturesque "Glen," with its tangled underwood and purling brook, was a favorite haunt of the poet in childhood. On one of the stones in this ravine he inscribed the words--BYRON IS DEAD--ere he was fifteen.

Alfred was the fourth son of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., rector of Somersby and other neighboring parishes. His father, the oldest son of George Tennyson, Esq., of Bayons and Usselby Hall, was a man of uncommon talents and attainments, who had tried his hand, with fair success, at architecture, painting, music and poetry. His mother was a sweet, gentle soul, and exceptionally sensitive. The poet-laureate seems to have inherited from her his refined, shrinking nature.

Dr. Tennyson married Miss Elizabeth Fytche, August 6, 1805. Their first child, George, died in infancy. According to the parish registers, the Tennyson family consisted of eleven children, viz.: Frederick, Charles, Alfred, Mary, Emily, Edward, Arthur, Septimus, Matilda, Cecilia and Horatio. They formed a joyous, lively household--amus.e.m.e.nts being agreeably mingled with their daily tasks. They were all handsome and gifted, with marked mental traits and imaginative temperaments. They were especially fond of reading and story-telling. At least four of the boys were addicted to verse-writing--a habit they kept up through life, though Alfred alone devoted himself to a poetical career as something more than a pastime. Frederick Tennyson's occasional pieces are characterized by luxuriant fancy and chaste diction; the sonnets of Charles won high praise from Coleridge, but the fame of both has been overshadowed by that of their distinguished brother.[1]

The scholarly clergyman, who was an M. A. of Cambridge, carefully attended to the education and training of his children. He turned his gifts and accomplishments to good account in stimulating their mental growth. Alfred was sent to the Louth Grammar School four years (1816-20). During this time he presumably learned something, although no flattering reports of his progress have come down to us. Then private teachers were employed by Dr. Tennyson to instruct his boys, but he took upon himself for the most part the burden of fitting them for college. Only a moderate amount of study was imposed by the rector. A great deal of the time Alfred was out of doors, rambling through the pastures and woods about Somersby and Bag Enderby. He was solitary, not caring to mingle with other boys in their sports. As a child, he exhibited the same peculiarities which characterized the man. He was shy and reserved, moody and absent-minded.

Alfred and Charles were devotedly attached to each other, and frequently were together in their walks. The lads were both large and strong for their age. Charles was a popular boy in Somersby on account of his frank, genial disposition--which cannot be said of the reticent Alfred.

One incident connected with the poet's education at home is worth repeating. His father required him to memorize the odes of Horace and to recite them morning by morning until the four books were gone through. The Laureate in later years testified to the value of this practice in cultivating a delicate sense for metrical music. He called Horace his master. Certainly no other bard has ever excelled Tennyson in the art of expressing himself in melodious verse.

From his twelfth to his sixteenth year, Alfred was apparently idle much of the time, yet he was unconsciously preparing for his life-work. He was gathering material and storing up impressions which were afterwards utilized. It was with him a formative period. The hours he spent strolling in lanes and woods were not wasted. The quiet, meditative boy lived in a realm of the imagination, and his thoughts and fancies took shape in crude poems.

This period of day-dreaming was followed by one of marked intellectual activity. The thin volume--_Poems by Two Brothers_, printed in 1826, contained the pieces written by Alfred when he was only sixteen or seventeen. It shows that these were busy years. The Tennyson youths not only scribbled a great deal of verse--they ranged far and wide in the fields of ancient and modern literature. Their father had a good library, and they appreciated its treasures. In the footnotes of their first book were many curious bits of information, and quotations from the cla.s.sics.

The Tennyson children were fortunate in having cultured parents. They were favored in another respect. Dr. Tennyson was comfortably well off for a clergyman. His means--which he shrewdly husbanded--enabled the family to spend the summers at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast. Thus Alfred's pa.s.sion for the sea was early developed. For some time it was the rector's custom to occupy a dwelling in Louth during the school year. In this way the seclusion and monotony of Somersby life were broken. The young Tennysons saw considerable of the world. They were often welcomed in the home of their grandmother, Mrs. Fytche, in Westgate Place, and occasionally visited the stately mansion at Bayons. Especially Charles and Alfred were at times the guests of their great-uncle Samuel Turner, vicar of Grasby and curate of Caistor, who afterwards left his property and parish livings to his favorite, Charles Tennyson Turner. Such were the experiences of the Laureate's youth and childhood, which inevitably influenced his whole life and entered into his poetry. He ill.u.s.trates the truth that a poet is largely what his environment makes him.

Byron exercised a magical spell over him in his teens, and this influence is apparent in his boyish rhymes which are tinged with Byronic melancholy.

Afterwards Keats gained the ascendency. As a colorist, Tennyson owes much to this gorgeous word-painter, whom he has equaled, if not surpa.s.sed, in his own field.

Alfred, in his boyhood, gave unmistakable indications of genius. During his university course at Cambridge, he was generally looked upon as a superior mortal, of whom great things were expected by his teachers and fellow-collegians. Dr. Whewell, his tutor, treated him with unusual respect.

While at Trinity college (1828-31) he formed friendships which lasted till death ended them one by one. It was indeed a company of choice spirits with whom Tennyson had the good fortune to be a.s.sociated. Among them were Thackeray, Helps, Garden, Sterling, Thompson, Kinglake, Maurice, Kemble, Milnes, Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Merivale, Spedding and others. Besides these, he numbered among the friends of his early manhood Fitzgerald, Hare, Hunt, Carlyle, Gladstone, Rogers, Landor, Forster, the Lushingtons and other famous scholars and men of letters.

In the companionship of such men, he found the stimulus necessary for the development of his poetical faculty. They all regarded him with feelings of warmest admiration.[2] The young poet had at least a few appreciative readers during the ten or twelve years of obscurity when the public cared little for his writings. He was encouraged by their words of commendation to pursue the bard's divine calling, to which he was led by an overmastering instinct. He could afford to wait and smile at his slashing reviewers. Meanwhile he profited by the suggestions of his critics. In this respect he presents a striking contrast to Browning. He mercilessly subjected his productions to the most painstaking revision.[3] He attempted various styles, and experimented with all sorts of metres. Thus he served his laborious apprenticeship and acquired a mastery of his art.

His eminent success has confirmed the expectations of his youthful admirers.

During his stay at Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam, a son of the historian. Hallam, who was a young man of extraordinary promise, became the dearest of his friends--more to him than brother. Their intimate fellowship was strengthened by Arthur's love for the poet's sister. It was his strongest earthly attachment. In 1830, the two friends traveled through France together, and stopped a while in the Pyrenees. On revisiting these mountains long afterward, the Laureate, overcome by reminiscences of other days, wrote the affecting lines ent.i.tled "In the Valley of Cauteretz":

All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago.

For all along the valley, while I walk'd to-day, The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead, And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

In 1833, the sudden death of Hallam, then Emily's betrothed, produced on Alfred's mind a deep and ineffaceable impression. While brooding over his sorrow, the idea came to him of expressing his emotions in verse which might be a fitting tribute to the dead. At different times and amid widely varying circ.u.mstances, were composed the elegiac strains and poetic musings that make up "In Memoriam," a poem representing many moods and experiences. It is a work occupying a place apart in literature. Its merits and defects are peculiar. There is no other elegy like it, and it may be doubted whether a second In Memoriam will ever be written. Tennyson erected an appropriate and imperishable monument to the memory of his lost friend. In conferring immortality upon his beloved Arthur, he gained it for himself. His best claim on the future is to be known and remembered as the author of "In Memoriam," his masterpiece.

Equally enduring is the melodious wail--"Break, break, break," one of the sweetest dirges in all literature. Hallam was buried (Jan. 3, 1834) at Clevedon by the Severn, near its entrance to the Bristol Channel, within sound of the melancholy waves. Singularly this exquisite song, which breathes of the sea, was not composed here, but "in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning," as the Laureate himself has declared. It was written within a year after Hallam's death, Sept. 15, 1833.

Not much has been learned of Tennyson's early manhood. No very definite picture can be formed of his life after he left college. He seldom wrote letters. Even his most intimate friends could not succeed in carrying on a correspondence with him. What happened to him is not, however, all a blank. A few sc.r.a.ps relating to his history are found in the letters of Carlyle, Fitzgerald, Milnes and others. A number of autobiographical fragments are sprinkled through the poems which he wrote between 1830 and 1850, but they refer more to his spiritual development than to the outward events which const.i.tute memoirs.

Mrs. Tennyson and her family continued to live at the Rectory after her husband died, March 16, 1831. In the autumn of 1835, she removed to High Beach, Epping Forest, ("In Memoriam," CII., CIV., CV.), and about 1840 to Well Walk, Hampstead. Here she made her home the rest of her life with her sister, Mary Ann Fytche--nearly all of her sons and daughters having married and scattered. She died February 21, 1865, at the age of eighty-four.

Alfred's university career was cut short by his father's death. For some years he remained at home--a diligent student of books and a close observer of nature. He roamed back and forth between Somersby and London, alternately in solitude and with his friends.[4] Fitzgerald tells of his visiting with Tennyson at the c.u.mberland home of James Spedding in 1835.

Here Alfred would spend hour after hour reading aloud "Morte d'Arthur" and other unpublished poems, which his scholarly friend criticized. In 1838, he was a welcome member of the Anonymous Club in London, and for several years he had rooms in this city at various intervals.[5] It was his custom to make long incursions through the country on foot, studying the landscapes of England and Wales and pondering many a lay unsung. Thus he became familiar with the natural features of the places ill.u.s.trated in his poems with such pictorial fidelity and vividness, though not with photographic accuracy.

Through this long period he was unknown to the great world. He lived modestly, though not in actual want. His books brought him no substantial returns till long after 1842. There was but little left of his patrimony, if any, when he was granted a pension of 200 in 1845. This timely aid was obtained for him by Sir Robert Peel, chiefly through the influence of Carlyle and Milnes.

Henceforth fortune graciously smiled upon him and made amends for past neglect. His reputation was becoming well established, and new editions of his poems were being called for. The Queen chanced to pick up one of his earlier volumes, and was charmed with the simple story of "The Miller's Daughter." She procured a copy of the book for the Princess Alice; this incident, it is related, brought him into favor with the aristocracy and gave a tremendous impetus to his popularity. After the death of Wordsworth in 1850, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate. Since then he has been highly esteemed by the royal family, and has produced in their honor some spirited odes and stately dedications.

The poet married (June 13, 1850) Miss Emily Sellwood, of Horncastle, whom he had known from childhood. Her mother was a sister of Sir John Franklin, and her youngest sister was the wife of Charles Tennyson Turner. Two or three years they lived at Twickenham, where Hallam Tennyson was born in 1852. Together they visited Italy in 1851, and vivid memories of their travels are recalled in "The Daisy," addressed to his wife. This interesting poem, written at Edinburgh, was suggested by the finding of a daisy in a book--the flower having been plucked on the Splugen and placed by Mrs. Tennyson between the leaves of a little volume as a memento of their Italian journey. The poet's fancy was stirred and revived the delicious hours--

In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

Those who are familiar with Tennyson's poems know how exalted is his ideal of woman as wife and mother. Lady Tennyson seems to have met the poet's exacting requirements almost perfectly. What sort of helpmeet she has been he lovingly portrayed in the "Dedication,"--a tender tribute that was fully deserved. "His most lady-like, gentle wife," Fitzgerald called her.

Of superior education and talent, she was a worthy companion for an author. A number of her husband's songs she has set to music. She has never sought public recognition. Content with the round of duties in a domestic sphere, she has lived for husband and children. Their married life has been exceptionally harmonious.[6]

In 1852, the Laureate's largely increasing income enabled him to purchase an estate of more than four hundred acres near Freshwater, Isle of Wight.