He laid the foundation-stone of it on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, 1868, few being there besides his great friend, Sir John Simeon, myself, and my wife, whom he dragged up the steep hillside in the blazing sunshine. He interfered very little about the progress of the work, except as to various little accidental things which moved his fancy. For instance, a stone shield in the gable of one of the dormer windows had remained blank when all the rest were carved — simply because of a hesitation how best to fill it up. But when the time came at which it must be finished, if done at all, he stood spying up at it through his eyeglass for a long while, and then decided to leave it blank, — so that the last touch to the work might be decided hereafter by Fate, accident having kept it open so long.
He was reminded by it of the blank shield in his own Idylls, of which Merlin asks, “Who shall blazon it? — when and how?” and adds, “Perchance when all our wars are done the brand Excalibur will be cast away.” In a similar way he would not let the figure of a stone Falcon be removed which had been set up as a model for approval at one corner of the parapet, but was never intended to stay there. He looked at it long and curiously, and laughed and said it seemed to grow queerer, that it was a pity to take it down; and there it remained ever after in its original solitariness, to his great content and amusement, which had a touch of seriousness in it.
He made a great point of his favourite motto, Gwyr yn erbyn y byd (“Truth against the world”), being prominently emblazoned in tile mosaic at the threshold of the front door and in the pavement of the Hall. The text, “Gloria Deo in Excelsis,” in the carved band which surrounds the house was the selection of Mrs. Tennyson. The formation of the terrace lawn in front of the house, with its boundary balustrade, interested him extremely; and when the vases were filled with splendid blossoms, standing out against the blue landscape, the vision he had foreseen from the potato-patch was realized to his full satisfaction. The invariable and tormenting delays in finishing the house, however, annoyed him greatly; for he longed to get into it away from the tourists, and used to say he should never live to enjoy it long enough. When he did move in, he said he wanted to have each room for his own, and at first adopted for sleeping in, the central top attic on the south front, which opened on to the lead flat of the large bay window on the first floor. He called it his balcony-room, and loved to stand out on the flat and watch the changes in the great prospect spread out before him. He ultimately gave this up for a guest’s room, and took to the finer room below, which was always flooded with light, and was filled with bright moonshine when he died in it. On one occasion, when I was sleeping in the balcony-room, I was suddenly waked up by a thundering at the door and his great voice calling out, “Get up and look out of the window.” I jumped out of bed accordingly, and saw the whole wide aspect turned into a flat white billowy ocean, with no trace of land at all, but with waves beginning to move and roll in it. The sun was just rising, and I stood to watch the gradual creation of a world as it were. From moment to moment the vast ocean broke up and rose away into clouds, uncovering the landscape bit by bit — the hills first and the valleys last, until the whole great prospect came together again into its normal picture. It was delightful to see his enjoyment of everything in the new house, from the hot-water bathroom downwards, for at first the hot bath seemed to attract him out of measure. He would take it four or five times a day, and told me he thought it the height of luxury “to sit in a hot bath and read about little birds.”
The following notes of a visit paid to him at Aldworth show the usual manner of his daily life there.
He usually dined rather early, at 7 or 7.30 o’clock, and Mrs. Tennyson would generally carve (or in later times Hallam), according to the old-fashioned custom. He talked freely, with an abundance of anecdote and story, and full of humour, and “chaff” (no touch of pedantry or priggism could live in his presence); and always when at home made a move for dessert to another room — the morning room at Aldworth — where he would begin his bottle (pint) of port, and with the exception of a glass or so, would finish it, talking all the time with entire geniality and abandon, and full of reminiscences of men and things. Sometimes he would recur to his grievances at the hands of his publishers, and pour out his complaints about them, until finally landed, to his entire satisfaction, with Macmillan.
After dessert he would retire to his study and his after-dinner pipe, which he took quite by himself; and would then come into the drawing-room, whither the others had repaired some time, and join in general talk again and perhaps read, at some one’s request, some of his own poems, till the ladies left for bed. Then he would invite some favoured guest or guests to his study, and begin the confidential discussions and soliloquies which it was a priceless privilege — the most valued and treasured of privileges — to share and to listen to. At such times all his inmost thoughts and feelings, recollections and speculations of his life came out with the open simplicity of a child and the keen insight and far sight of a prophet; and one had glimpses into the mystery of things beyond one’s own power of seeing, and as if seen through a telescope.
I have before stated how he more than once summed up his personal religion in the words: “There’s a Something That watches over us, and our Individuality endures.” On one occasion he added, “I do not say endures for ever, but I say endures after this life at any rate.” When in answer to the question, What was his deepest desire of all? he said, “A clearer vision of God,” it exactly expressed the continued strivings of his spirit for more light upon every possible question, which so constantly appear in his poems, which led him to join in founding the Metaphysical Society, and induced him to write the introductory sonnet in the Nineteenth Century. Out of all such talks, at many times and places repeated, I came to know his actual personal position, in those years at any rate of the growth of old age, concerning the most vital problems of this world and this life. Many scores of such times have fallen to my happy lot, and my life has been all the richer for them.
THE FUNERAL OF DICKENS
I remember, when he went with me to Westminster Abbey to hear Dean Stanley preach Dickens’s funeral sermon, we sat within the rails of the Sacrarium so as to be near the pulpit, and when we came away he told me the story of the Oriental traveller who mistook the organ for the Church’s God. He was very fond of the story, and often repeated it. As he told it, the traveller was made to say: “We went into one of their temples to see their worship. The temple is only opened sometimes, and they keep their God shut up in a great gold box at one end of it. When we passed inside the doors we heard him grumbling and growling as if out of humour at being disturbed in his solitude; and as the worshippers came in they knelt down and seemed to supplicate him and try to propitiate him. He became quieter for a while, only now and then grumbling for a few moments, but then he got louder again and the whole body of the people stood up and cried to him together, and after a while persuaded him to be still. Presently he began once more and then, after praying all together several times, they deputed one of their number to stand up alone and address him earnestly on their behalf, deprecating his anger. He spoke so long without an interruption that it seemed the God had either fallen asleep or been finally persuaded into a better temper; but suddenly at last he broke out into a greater passion than ever, and with such tremendous noise and roarings that all the worshippers rose from their seats in fright and ran out of the temple.”
There was an immense congregation that day in the Abbey — and when the service was over — we stood up waiting a long time to pass out through the rails. But instead of dispersing by the outer door the people all turned eastward and flocked towards the altar, pressing closer and closer up to the Sacrarium. The chances of getting out became less and less, and I turned to Tennyson and said, “I don’t know what all this means, but we seem so hemmed in that it is useless to move as yet.” Then a man, standing close by me whispered, “I don’t think they will go, sir, so long as your friend stands there.” Of course I
saw at once what was happening — it had got to be known that Tennyson was present, and the solid throng was bent on seeing him. Such a popularity had never occurred to me or to him, and justified his nervous unwillingness to be seen in crowded places. I was obliged to tell him what was going on, upon which he urgently insisted on being let out some quiet way and putting an end to the dilemma.
FRAGMENTARY NOTES OF TENNYSON’S TALK by Arthur Coleridge
But for the suggestion of the present Lord Tennyson, I should shrink from the presumption of posing as a friend of his illustrious father, who for three Easters made of me a companion, sometimes for two, more often three hours daily, for three weeks at a time together. I should be safe in saying that the most gifted men I have ever known, Tennyson, Browning, and Cory, were in the realms of thought, philosophy, and imagination foremost in an age which in two instances acknowledged their supremacy whilst they lived, and in the third has ungrudgingly admitted him as one taking high rank amongst the English poets of the second order. I link his name with that of the two great men, for I have abundant materials for forming my opinion of him in the shape of three volumes of correspondence, begun in my boyhood and continued for years during my friend’s lifetime.
Mr. Fitzherbert was a welcome friend of Dr. Johnson’s. “Ursa Major” warmed to him, though perfectly conscious that Fitz was anything but a star of the first magnitude. He says: “There was no sparkle, no brilliancy in Fitzherbert, but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He made everybody quite easy, overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said.” “Such characters,” says Mr. Raleigh, “are the oil of society, yet a society made wholly of such characters would have no taste.”
Tennyson’s fidelity and patience with me were very much of a mystery; possibly I may have fitted his hand as a pet walking-stick; anyhow, I was “Man Friday to his Crusoe” as the play-actors say, and “constitutionals” with the Poet Laureate and his dogs, a wolf-hound or a deer-hound, Karénina or Lufra, were matters of daily occurrence in my Freshwater days. After 5 o’clock tea I left the Poet to “his sacred half-hour,” and his pipe of tobacco. By the way, he smoked straight-stemmed Dublin clay-pipes, and hated new pipes, which he would soak in coffee.
I believe that in the early days of our acquaintance the Poet, seeing me with what appeared to be a notebook under my arm, suspected me of Boswellizing, but I was duly warned and reassured him of my innocence. I simply recorded very briefly in my diary a few of his “dicta” which I wished to have for the benefit of my children, one of whom was a frequent and delighted listener to the Laureate’s reading of his own poems. Mary Coleridge, at that time a shy, timid girl, was more than once asked to dictate the particular poems she wanted him to recite. I can hear him saying, “Give me my seven-and-sixpenny” (meaning the single volume edition), and then we listened to the “high Orphic chant,” rather than the conventional reading of many of our favourite poems. I often asked for the “Ode on the Duke of Wellington,” and on one occasion, in the presence of Sir Charles Stanford — then organist of Trinity College, Cambridge — the Poet, lowering his voice at the words, “God accept him, Christ receive him,” added: “It’s a mighty anthem, that’s what it is.” Stanford’s music to “The Voyage of Mældune” was written at Freshwater, and four of us visitors sang a lovely quartet in that work for the first time in the Poet’s presence. It was rather nervous work, for the composer and ourselves were anxious to satisfy the Poet in a work intended as a novelty for the Leeds Festival. The verdict was rather enigmatical: “I like the ripple of your music.” It met with a good reception at Leeds, and Madame Albani expressed a confident hope in my hearing that the work would become popular. I wish the prophecy had been adequately fulfilled, but English audiences, though, like the Athenians of old, clamouring for a new thing, are very cautious in giving more than one or two trials to musical novelties. It is lamentable to see works which have cost long years, perhaps a lifetime, of skilled experience, shelved in musical libraries or relegated to foreign audiences for adjudication of their real value.
It was my daily habit during the Easter holidays for three years to call at Farringford at 10.30, and present myself in the Poet’s sanctum, where I found him at his desk in the very act of hatching a poem or amending an old one. He would greet me with “Here comes my daily bread.” Then I read the newspaper or a book until we started for our morning walk. The dialogue would begin abruptly, starting from some impressions left by our musical rehearsals on the previous day. “Why is Stanford unable to set to music the word ‘cosmopolite’?” (See Appendix B.) The reasons seemed to me quite intelligible, but not so to a poet as fastidious as Wordsworth when discussing the Installation Ode with Professor Walmisley. I expect Purcell had more than one bad half-hour with Dryden, for the laws and regulations of musical accent may often conflict with the cadences and scansion adopted by the poet. Sir Charles Stanford and Sir Hubert Parry (lucida sidera) are rare instances of musical composers with an instinctive appreciation of the fitness and adaptability of poetry offered for musical treatment.
Tennyson was loyal to the core on the subject of his old university, and amongst his constant visitors were some of my old contemporaries, Bradshaw, Lightfoot, and Montagu Butler. These, the fleurs fines of my day, were constant topics, and I eagerly listened to his recollections of the Cambridge men of his own generation. “Thompson” (afterwards Master of Trinity), he said, “was the last man I saw at Cambridge. I saw him standing at the door of the Bull Inn — his handsome face under a street lamp. We have been friends ever since.” He enjoyed the master’s witticisms, and especially “even the youngest among us is not infallible.”
The Professorship of Greek carried with it a Canonry of Ely, and Thompson’s times of residence were rather dreaded by the new holders of the office. His health, never of the best, was tried by the atmosphere, and finding the loneliness of his bachelor life insupportable, he begged an old College contemporary to pay him a visit. The friend came and was duly installed, but the sleeping accommodation was found wanting, and in answer to his petition for another bedroom with a good fire in it his host observed, “So sorry, my dear fellow, but I put five of my sermons into that bedroom, and if they have failed to dry it, nothing else will.”
T. “My tailor at Cambridge was a man of the name of Law. When he made his way into our rooms, and worried us about paying our bills, we used to say, ‘This is Law’s Serious Call.’ I capped this story with a similar Oxford tradition. The name of the Oxford tailor was Joy, and the undergraduates, soaked with port wine, used to say, ‘Heaviness may endure for a night, but Joy cometh in the morning.’”
T. “You cannot wonder at my horror of all the libels and slanders; people began to slander me in early days. For example, after my marriage we spent the honeymoon on Coniston Lake in a cottage lent to me by James Marshall. Shortly after this, a paragraph appeared in an American newspaper to the following effect: ‘We hope, now that Mr. Tennyson is married and has returned to his native lakes, that he will give up opium.’ The penny-a-liners evidently confounded your uncle, S. T. Coleridge, with myself — anyhow, if he wasn’t quite certain, he gave your relative the benefit of the doubt.”
“Again, I was once persuaded by an adventuress (who wrought upon me by her tale of hopeless poverty) to hear her read in my own drawing-room. She was in my house for exactly half an hour, and profited by her experience in telling her audiences that she had seen me thrashing my wife, and carried away drunk by two men-servants to my bedroom.”
One day we visited the grave of Lord Tennyson’s shepherd; he died at the age of ninety-one. On his death-bed Hallam asked him if he would remember in his will his two sons in Australia who had entirely ignored and neglected him. “No,” he said firmly; and he left his 17s. 6d. a year to the poorest man in the parish of Freshwater. On his tombstone are engraved the L
aureate’s own words from “In Memoriam”:
God’s finger touched him and he slept.
I showed Lord Tennyson some manuscript verses by my friend Bernard Drake, who died at Madeira in 1853. He read them twice through, slowly and aloud. I had told him of Drake’s history, and then showed him the verses; their sadness impressed him greatly:
ON ILLNESS
I
Thou roaring, roaming Sea!
When first I came into this happy isle,
I loved to listen evermore to thee,
And meditate the while.
II
But now that I have grown
Homesick, and weary of my loneliness,
It makes me sad to hear thy plaintive moan
And fills me with distress.
III
It speaks of many a friend,
Whom I shall meet no more on Life’s dark road,
It warns that here I must await the end
And cast no look abroad.
IV
Thou ever roaring Sea!
I love thee, for that o’er thy waters come
The stately ships, breasting them gloriously,
That bring me news of home.
V
I cannot pray for grace —
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 207