Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  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 snobbery 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 passionate.”

  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:

  Thank old Alfred for his letter which was an unexpected pleasure. I like to hear of him and you once or twice in the year: but I know he is no dab at literature at any time, poor fellow. “Paltry Poet” — Let him believe it is anything but want of love for him that keeps me out of the Isle of Wight: nor is it indolence neither. — But to say what it is would make me write too much about myself. Only let him believe what I do say.

  Their relations were always of this playful, intimate kind, resting on long acquaintance. If FitzGerald was amused by “Alfred,” Tennyson, on the other hand, was well used to his old friend’s humour. When we spoke about him, he dwelt, I recollect, on this particular trait, and told me, to illustrate it, the story which is now, I think, pretty well known, how, when some common acquaintance had bored them with talking about his titled friends, “Old Fitz,” as at last he took up his candle to go to bed, turned to Tennyson and said, quietly and quaintly, “I knew a Lord once, but he’s dead.”

  When Tennyson spoke of Omar he said, what he has said in verse, that he admired it greatly:

  Than which I know no version done

  In English more divinely well;

  A planet equal to the sun

  Which cast it.

  But of course he was aware that it was by no means always faithful to the original. It is indeed a liberal, rather than a literal translation — how liberal, all know who have been at the pains to compare FitzGerald’s poem with any of the many literal versions to which it has given rise.

  In quite the early Twickenham days, just after their marriage, he would invite himself to dine or stay with Tennyson and his wife, nay more, would ask to bring friends to see them, such as the Cowells and W. B. Donne. In 1854 he stayed at Farringford for a fortnight, a visit he always remembered, and often referred to, with pleasure. Together he and Tennyson worked at Persian. He also sketched, and botanized with the Poet. But he could not be got to repeat the visit; and indeed, as he said himself, it was the last of the kind he paid anywhere, except to Mrs. Kemble. When he reached London, just after this visit, he wrote to Tennyson:

  60 Lincoln’s Inn Fields,

  June 15th, 1854.

  My dear Alfred — I called at Quaritch’s to look for another Persian Dictionary. I see he has a copy of Eastwick’s Gulistan for ten shillings: a translation (not Eastwick’s, however, but one quite sufficient for the purpose) can be had for five shillings. Would you like me to buy them and send them down to you by the next friend who travels your way: or will you wait till some good day I can lend you my Eastwick (which is now at Oxford)? I could mark some of the pieces which I think it might not offend you to read: though you will not care greatly for anything in it.

  Oh, such an atmosphere as I am writing in! — Yours,

  E. F. G.

  I left my little Swedenborg at Farringford. Please keep it for me, as it was a gift from my sister.

  The note of the letters is always the same — warm affection, deep underlying admiration and regard, superficial banter and play of humour, and humorous, half-grumbling criticism. When they met face to face, after being parted for twenty years, they fell at once into exactly the old vein. FitzGerald was surprised at this, but he need not have been. Both were the sincerest and most natural of men, and nothing but distance and absence had occurred to sever them.

  From the first he had conceived an intense and almost humble-minded admiration for Alfred. One of his earliest utterances describes his feelings, and strikes, with his keen critical perception, the true note. “I will say no more of Tennyson,” he wrote, “than that the more I have seen of him, the more cause I have to think him great. His little humours and grumpinesses were so droll that I was always laughing, — I must, however say further, that I felt, what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of depression at times from the over-shadowing of a so much more lofty intellect than my own — I could not be mistaken in the universality of his mind.”

  His descriptions in Euphranor, published some sixteen years later, of “the only living and like to live poet he had known,” tell the same tale. They speak of Tennyson’s union of passion and strength. “As King Arthur shall bear witness, no young Edwin he, though as a great Poet comprehending all the softer stops of human Emotion in that Register where the Intellectual, no less than what is called the Poetical, faculty predominated. As all who knew him know, a Man at all points, Euphranor — like your Digby, of grand proportion and feature....”

  There was no one for whose opinion he had so much regard, grumble though he might, and criticize as he would. He had a special preference for the poems at whose production he had assisted, which he had seen in MS., or heard rehearsed orally. Toward the later poems his feeling was not the same. The following extracts are all equally characteristic:

  Markethill, Woodbridge,

  November 20th, 1861.

  My dear old Alfred — It gives me a strange glow of pleasure when I come upon your verses, as I now do in every other
book I take up, with no name of author, as every other person knows whose they are. I love to light on the verses for their own sake, and to remember having heard nearly all I care for — and what a lot that is! — from your own lips.

  Markethill, Woodbridge,

  December 14th, 1862.

  My dear old Alfred — Christmas coming reminds me of my half-yearly call on you.

  I have, as usual, nothing to tell of myself: boating all the summer and reading Clarissa Harlowe since. You and I used to talk of the Book more than twenty years ago. I believe I am better read in it than almost any one in existence now — No wonder: for it is almost intolerably tedious and absurd — But I can’t read the “Adam Bedes,” “Daisy Chains,” etc., at all. I look at my row of Sir Walter Scott and think with comfort that I can always go to him of a winter evening, when no other book comes to hand.

  To Frederick Tennyson.

  November 15th, 1874.

  I wrote my yearly letter to Mrs. Alfred a fortnight ago, I think; but as yet have had no answer. Some Newspaper people make fun of a Poem of Alfred’s, the “Voice and the Peak,” I think: giving morsels of which of course one could not judge. But I think he had better have done singing: he has sung well — tempus silere, etc.

  But his love for the man and his underlying belief in his opinion and genius never varied. “I don’t think of you so little, my dear old Alfred,” he wrote one day in the middle of their friendship, “but rejoice in the old poems and in yourself, young or old, and worship you (I may say) as I do no other man, and am glad I can worship one man still.”

  His delight when he found that Alfred had really liked Omar was unusually naïf and keen. He forgot his grumbling, and wrote to Mrs. Tennyson:

  To Mrs. Tennyson.

  November 4/67.

  To think of Alfred’s approving my old Omar! I never should have thought he even knew of it. Certainly I should never have sent it to him, always supposing that he would not approve anything but a literal Prose translation — unless from such hands as can do original work and therefore do not translate other People’s! Well: now I have got Nicolas and sent a copy to Cowell, and when he is at liberty again we shall beat up old Omar’s Quarters once more.

  I’ll tell you a very pretty Book. Alfred Tennyson’s Pastoral Poems, or rather Rural Idylls (only I must hate the latter word) bound up in a volume, Gardener’s, Miller’s, Daughters; Oak; Dora; Audley Court, etc.

  Oh the dear old 1842 days and editions! Spedding thinks I’ve shut up my mind since. Not to “Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud.” When I ask People what Bird says that of an evening, they say “The Thrush.”

  I wish you would make one of your Boys write out the “Property” Farmer Idyll. Do now, pray.

  E. F. G.

  When he had first “discovered” Omar, and was beginning to work upon him, Tennyson (who was then finishing the early “Idylls of the King”) had been one of the first to whom he wrote. It is worth remembering that FitzGerald was then in deep depression. It was the middle of the sad period of his brief, unhappy married life. This had proved a failure in London. It was proving a failure now in the country. He wrote:

  Gorlestone, Great Yarmouth,

  July 1857.

  My dear old Alfred — Please direct the enclosed to Frederick. I wrote him some months ago getting Parker to direct; but have had no reply. You won’t write to me, at which I can’t wonder. I keep hoping for King Arthur — or part of him. I have got here to the seaside — a dirty, Dutch-looking sea, with a dusty Country in the rear; but the place is not amiss for one’s Yellow Leaf. I keep on reading foolish Persian too: chiefly because of it’s connecting me with the Cowells, now besieged in Calcutta. But also I have really got hold of an old Epicurean so desperately impious in his recommendations to live only for To-day that the good Mahometans have scarce dared to multiply MSS. of him. He writes in little quatrains, and has scarce any of the iteration and conceits to which his people are given. One of the last things I remember of him is that—”God gave me this turn for drink, perhaps God was drunk when he made me” — which is not strictly pious. But he is very tender about his roses and wine, and making the most of this poor little life.

  All which is very poor stuff you will say. Please to remember me to the Lady. I don’t know when I shall ever see you again; and yet you can’t think how often I wish to do so, and never forget you, and never shall, my dear old Alfred, in spite of Epicurus. But I don’t grow merrier. — Yours ever,

  E. F. G.

  In 1872 he was busy with the third edition of Omar, and wrote to consult Tennyson. The first edition had contained only seventy-five quatrains. The second was a good deal longer, containing one hundred and ten. The third was again shortened to one hundred and one:

  Woodbridge, March 25th, 1872.

  My dear Alfred — It would be impertinent in me to trouble you with a question about my grand Works. But, as you let me know (through Mrs. T.) that you liked Omar, I want to know whether you read the First or Second Edition; and, in case you saw both, which you thought best? The reason of my asking you is that Quaritch (Publisher) has found admirers in America who have almost bought up the whole of the last enormous Edition — amounting to 200 copies, I think — so he wishes to embark on 200 more, I suppose: and says that he, and his Readers, like the first Edition best: so he would reprint these.

  Of course I thought the second best: and I think so still: partly (I fear) because the greater number of verses gave more time for the day to pass from morning till night.

  Well, what I ask you to do is, to tell me which of the two is best, if you have seen the two. If you have not, I won’t ask you further: — if you have, you can answer in two words. And your words would be more than all the rest.

  This very little business is all I have eyes for now; except to write myself once more ever your’s and Mrs. Tennyson’s,

  E. F. G.

  Another letter a little later refers to the same reprinting of Omar:

  My dear Alfred — I must thank you, as I ought, for your second note. The best return I can make is not to listen to Mrs. Tennyson’s P.S., which bids me send another Omar: — for I have only got Omar the Second, I am sure now you would not like him so well as the first (mainly because of “too much”). I think he might disgust you with both.

  So though two lines from you would have done more to decide on his third appearance (if Quaritch still wishes that), I will not put you to that trouble, but do as I can alone — cutting out some, and retaining some; and will send you the result if it comes into type.

  You used to talk of my crotchets: but I am quite sure you have one little crotchet about this Omar: which deserves well in its way, but not so well as you write of it. You know that though I do not think it worth while to compete with you in your paltry poetical capacity, I won’t surrender in the critical, not always, at least. And, at any rate, I have been more behind the scenes in this little matter than you. But I do not the less feel your kindness in writing about it: for I think you would generally give £100 sooner than write a letter. And I am — Yours ever,

  E. F. G.

  The next year, in 1873, he wrote again, touching on the same theme and others:

  Dear Mrs. Tennyson — I remember Franklin Lushington perfectly — at Farringford in 1854; almost the last visit I paid anywhere: and as pleasant as any, after, or before. I have still some sketches I made of the place: “Maud, Maud, Maud,” etc., was then read to me, and has rung in my ears ever after. Mr. Lushington, I remember, sketched also. If he be with you still, please tell him that I hope his remembrance of me is as pleasant as mine of him.

  I think I told you that Frederick came here in August, having (of course) missed you on his way. The Mistress of Trinity wrote to me some little while ago, telling me, among other things, that she, and others, were much pleased with your son Hallam, whom they thought to be like the “Paltry Poet” (poor fellow).

  The Paltry one’s Portrait is put in a frame and hung up at my château, where
I talk to it sometimes, and every one likes to see it. It is clumsy enough, to be sure; but it still recalls the old man to me better than the bearded portraits which are now the fashion.

  But oughtn’t your Hallam to have it over his mantelpiece at Trinity?

  The first volume of Forster’s Dickens has been read to me of a night, making me love him, up to 30 years of age at any rate; till then, quite unspoilt, even by his American triumphs, and full of good humour, generosity, and energy. I wonder if Alfred remembers dining at his house with Thackeray and me, me taken there, quite unaffected, and seeming to wish any one to show off rather than himself. In the evening we had a round game at cards and mulled claret. Does A. T. remember?

  I have had my yearly letter from Carlyle, who writes of himself as better than last year. He sends me a Mormon Newspaper, with a very sensible sermon in it from the life of Brigham Young, as also the account of a visit to a gentleman of Utah with eleven wives and near forty children, all of whom were very happy together. I am just going to send the paper to Archdeacon Allen to show him how they manage these things over the Atlantic.

  About Omar I must say that all the changes made in the last copy are not to be attributed to my own perverseness; the same thought being constantly repeated with directions, whether by Omar or others, in the 500 quatrains going under his name. I had not eyes, nor indeed any further appetite, to refer to the Original, or even to the French Translation; but altered about the “Dawn of Nothing” as A. T. pointed out its likeness to his better property. I really didn’t, and don’t, think it matters what changes are made in that Immortal Work which is to last about five years longer. I believe it is the strong-minded American ladies who have chiefly taken it up; but they will soon have something wickeder to digest, I dare say.