Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Intensely needed sympathy.

  A great and deep strength.

  He mastered circumstances, 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 “God,” “Free-Will,” and “Immortality,” yet always seeming to find an (apparent) contradiction between the “imperfect world,” and “the perfect attributes of God.”

  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 CLASSICS 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 repetition 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 Δ, the first letter of Δακυνίδιον, which, being interpreted, is “Little Dakyns,” by which name your father spoke of me, at least on one occasion.

  Tennyson and his two Sons. By Julia Margaret Cameron.

  My first Introduction to her and the two Boys, and presently to him, at Farringford, March (?) 1861

  I shall never forget the beauty of the scene — I wish I could actualize it — and it was accompanied by what appealed not only to the eye, but to the heart, a mysterious sense of at-homeness. Your mother, as I think I have often told you, was seated half-reclining on the sofa which stood with its back to the window, with that wonderful view of capes and sea beyond. And you two stood leaning against her, one on either side. She was, and always remained, supremely beautiful, not only in feature and the bodily frame, but still more from the look in her eyes, the motion of her lips, and the deep clear music of her voice. Such a combination of grace and dignity with simplicity and frankness and friendliness of accost as never was. Such gentle trustfulness and sincerity of welcome as must have won a less susceptible heart than that of the diffidently intrusive παιδαγωγὸς Δ. I thought she must be a queen who had stept down from mediæval days into these more prosaic times which she ennobled. And the two Boys. If I cannot speak about them to you, you will guess the reason. But for the benefit of a younger generation, I appeal to the portraits of her by Watts (now at Aldworth), and of Hallam and Lionel — surely among the best he ever painted — which are given in your father’s Memoir (vol. i. facing p. 330 and p. 370).

  And then he came in, a truly awful moment, but in an instant of time he too had not only banished the nervousness of Δ, but won his heart. His welcome resembled hers in its sincerity. And even if I had been ten times more nervous than I was, and awe-stricken I was, no doubt, something set me at my ease at once. Of his look and manner I find it not only hard, but absurd to attempt to speak. He must have been at that date somewhat over fifty. I was twenty-three, not quite thirty years younger. His figure, so well known in the photographs of the time, was imposing, and it was awe-inspiring to be in the presence of the great Poet we had hero-worshipped in our youth (though he, I think, was not the only divinity in our Pantheon, there was Clough also — Browning at that date had not appeared). But even so formidable as he was on these grounds, the humanity of the man, and what I came to regard as the most abiding, perhaps the deepest-seated, characteristic, his eternal youthfulness, acted as a spell, and timidity melted into affection. I can still feel his hand-grip, soft at once and large and strong, as he stood there peering down on the relatively small mortal before him — so sane, and warm, and trustful.

  As to his so-called gruffness of manner, I will speak about that later on, but I want at once to make clear a certain quality of mind which I believe helped things, so that he was not troubled by the presence of a stranger, either then or when Δ was no longer a stranger, ever afterwards. I suppose if there had been any occasion for comparing notes he might have discovered much to object to in my attitude to the universe, especially during my turbulent youth, but we had much in common, he in his great grand way illimitably, and I in my tentative fashion diminutively. The quality I refer to as a bond was a heartfelt detestation on Δ’s part of what I venture to call the pseudo-biographic mania. The notion of collecting tiny pinhead facts, or words actually spoken but separated from their context: the idea of collecting these and calling the result biography I loathed. So when I found, as I did at once, that the great man, the poet, and the equally great woman his wife, held similar views, I applauded myself and became more and more rigidly unbiographic. Of course, I see now that Δ was possibly over-scrupulous. Instead of depending on mere recollection, how much more sensible, and not a whit the less reverential, it would have been to have taken down at many a conversation some catchword of what he said, and his remarks were apt to be as incisive as they were laconic. And the Poet’s fore-ordained biographer would have blessed the inspiration. Would Tennyson himself have been equally pleased? I am not so sure. But what he really deprecated was after all only the vulgar tales of the spurious biographer. “In life the owls — at death the ghouls.”

  With this apology I come to some among the dicta current in my time. I think it was the first night I happened to use the word “knowledge,” pronouncing it as I had been brought up to do with the ō long, whereupon he complimented me. “You say ‘knōwledge,’” and explained that “knŏwledge” to rhyme with “college” was the only permissible exception. I felt pleased with my domestic training. Then he went on to denounce a solecism, the use of “like” with a verb, “like he did,” instead of “as he did,” and humorously he begged me to correct any one guilty of such barbarism, a pledge I undertook, and acted up to, correcting speakers right and left till it came to the superior clergy, bishops, and so forth, in the pulpit; then I desisted....

/>   But to proceed. Apropos of Voltaire saying that to listen to English people talking was to overhear the hissing of serpents, he commented, “and to listen to German was to overhear k’s like the scrunching of egg-shells.” He had two or three pithy sayings, which came straight home to me and became part of my mental furniture, so much so that I have at times given myself the credit of innovating them. One of these was that the defect of most people — not critics only, but others, la foule in general — is “to impute themselves.” I felt this to be at the root of the matter, a profound if humorous extension of the wise man’s saw, πάντων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος. He said it often and most seriously. The other I might call the “elogium vatis” par excellence. It took the form of a caution against “mixing up things that differ,” and to this also among his sententiae I assented quod latius patet. I think I once used it incidentally to him, and he at once pulled me up. “That’s mine.” He certainly did so when I asked him his own riddle: “My first’s a kind of butter, my second’s a kind of liquor, and my whole’s a kind of charger.” Answer: “Ramrod.” And he exclaimed, “That’s my riddle.” Then there is the old story how the Englishman, wishing to direct the garçon not to let the fire go out, gently growled, “Ne permettez pas sortir le fou,” whereupon the garçon locks up the other Englishman. I think it was brought up by Frank Lushington as now told against the Poet, and Tennyson gave us the correct version; originally he had invented it himself of Edmund Lushington when they were in Paris, chaffing his friend’s French. But it was a case of biter bit. In the vulgar version I find the Poet with his long hair is made to play the part of the fou. Thus far these trifles. I come to memorabilia more precious to me and of larger import. I will head the section

  Tennyson and the Classics, English and Other,

  and it is what you asked for. And let me make two preliminary remarks. In reference to the defect of self-imputation above mentioned, I wish to point out to any, consciously or unconsciously, critically minded person, that the striking thing to me was the wide sympathy, the catholicity of the Poet’s mind, his width of view. Thus he — I will not use the word “displayed,” as if it were an external habit of any sort — but simply and naturally he had ingrained in him the greatest generosity in his feeling for, in his criticism of, contemporary authors. And this applies to his appreciation of the great classical authors of the past. I do not say, of course, that he had not his favourites, as we all have, especially, perhaps, the smaller we are. For instance — and here other of his contemporaries, Clough, Jowett, etc., would have borne him out — his appreciation of Δ’s favourite poet Shelley was not so spontaneous nor, I venture to think, so profound as, let us say, his appreciation of Wordsworth (whom he also “criticized”) or Victor Hugo, or, to take an opposite instance, his ready appreciation of Walt Whitman, or of Browning, or possibly of Clough. But all this is admirably discussed in your Memoir. I only wish to add my testimony, and I take as my text a saying of his about Goethe, which I seem to recollect if I recollect rightly: “In his smaller poems, e.g. those in Wilhelm Meister, Goethe shows himself to be one of the great artists of the world. He is also a great critic, yet he always said the best he could of an author. Good critics are rarer than good authors” (cp. his own “And the critic’s rarer still”).

  And I must further premise that the samples given of quotations from the Classics are from the particular ones he chanced upon — the artist in him, perhaps, instinctively selecting — for the particular youth, and what he needed, or because they fitted on to things on which his mind was working at that date. Here, at all events, they are, or some of them. I omit continual references to Shakespeare, to Dante, to Virgil, to Homer. He was perpetually quoting Homer and Virgil, and to my mind there was nothing for grandeur of sound like his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as he recited whole passages or single lines in illustration of some point, of metre, perhaps, or thought, or feeling; for instance, the line from Homer:

  βῆ δ᾽ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης,

  commenting on the possibility of pronouncing οι not in our English fashion like oy in boy, but like the German ö — o of “wood” — phlösböo — imitating the lisping whisper of the tideless Mediterranean on a soft summer day. Then how he rolled out his Virgil, giving first the thunder, then the wash of the sea in these lines:

  Fluctus ut in medio coepit quum albescere ponto

  Longius, ex altoque sinum trahit; utque volutus

  Ad terras immane sonat per saxa, neque ipso

  Monte minor procumbit; at ima exaestuat unda

  Verticibus, nigramque alte subiectat arenam.

  He used to say, “The Horatian alcaic is, perhaps, the stateliest metre except the Virgilian hexameter at its best.”

  I take my samples in chance order. I suppose I knew my Catullus fairly well before, but I am sure that, in a deeper sense, I learnt to know “the tenderest of Roman poets” for the first time that day when he read to me in that voice of his, with half-sad Heiterkeit, and with that refinement of pronunciation which seemed — I am sure was — the right thing absolutely, those well-known poems about his lady-love’s pet sparrow (translated roughly here in case a reader should chance not to know Latin):

  Passer, deliciae meae puellae,

  Quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,

  Cui primum digitum dare appetenti

  Et acris solet incitare morsus,

  Cum desiderio meo nitenti

  Carum nescio quid libet iocari.

  Credo ut, cum gravis acquiescet ardor,

  Tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem

  Et tristis animi levare curas!

  Sparrow, pet of my lady-love, with you she will play; she will hold you in her bosom and give you her finger-tips to peck at, and tease to quicken your sharp bite, when my shining heart’s desire is in the humour for some darling jest. Doubtless, when the fever of passion dies away she seeks to find some little solace for her pain. Oh, if I could only play with you as she does, and so relieve the gloomy sorrow of my soul!

  And then the tear-moving sequel in the minor:

  Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,

  Et quantum est hominum venustiorum.

  Passer mortuus est meae puellae,

  Passer, deliciae meae puellae,

  Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat;

  Nam mellitus erat suamque norat

  Ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,

  Nec sese a gremio illius movebat,

  Sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc

  Ad solam dominam usque pipillabat.

  Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum

  Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.

  At vobis male sit, malae tenebrae

  Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:

  Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.

  Vae factum male! Vae miselle passer!

  Tua nunc opera meae puellae

  Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

  Mourn, all ye Goddesses of Love, and all ye Cupids mourn: mourn, all ye sons of men that know what love is. My lady’s sparrow is dead, dead; her sparrow, my lady’s pet, whom she loved more than her own eyes, for he was honey-sweet, and knew his own mistress as well as any girl her mother; nor would he stir from his lady’s bosom, but hopping about, now here, now there, he piped his little treble to her and her alone. But now he goes along the darksome road, to that place whence they say no one returns. Ah, my curse upon you! Cursed shades of Orcus, that devour all things beautiful! So beautiful a sparrow have ye taken from me! Alas for the ill deed done! Alas, poor little sparrow! Now, because of you my lady’s dear eyes are swollen, they are red with weeping.

  The tenderness of his voice when he came to the eleventh and twelfth lines, and the measured outburst of passionate imprecation, come back almost audibly. I wish I could reproduce the pathos. But in the poem he next read to me, the tenderness of Catullus and his perfection of form reach, I think, a climax. So I think he felt, he who so revived
his manner in “Frater Ave atque Vale,” and his reading gave me that impression. I refer to the passionate poem:

  Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

  Rumoresque senium severiorum

  Omnes unius aestimemus assis.

  Soles occidere et redire possunt:

  Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,

  Nox est perpetua una dormienda.

  Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

  Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

  Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.

  Dein, quum millia multa fecerimus,

  Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

  Aut nequis malus invidere possit,

  Cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

  Let us live, my Lesbia, live and love; and, as for the slanderous tongues of greybeards, value them all at a farthing’s worth. Suns may set and suns may rise again, but for us, when our short day has ended, one long night comes, a night of sleep that knows no ending. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, and then another thousand and a second hundred, and then once more a thousand and again a hundred, on and on. And then, when we have made up many thousands, we will overturn the reckoning that we may not know the number, nor any villain cast an evil eye on us, though he discover all that huge amount of kisses.

  Can’t you overhear his voice? Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, deep-toned and fast, like a pent-up stream in spate, bursting its barriers, till the tale is told.

  Two other poems of Catullus I must mention. The first of these he had much on his mind, for he was just then in the mood for experiments on metre, and the famous poem “Boädicea” was, I think, the first of these, echoing the galliambics of Catullus in the “Attis”:

  Super alta vectus Attis celeri rate maria.

  How far his own metre corresponds to Catullus’ is a question for experts like Bridges, Mayor, R. C. Trevelyan, etc., to determine, but I heard him more than once read first the Attis poem and then his “Boädicea,” and I thought at the time there was an extraordinary resemblance in rhythm. He wished that the “Boädicea” were musically annotated, so that it might be read with proper quantity and pace.