Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  “You will see in the Morning Herald of to-day,” he writes to Thompson, “that the great event has already taken place, and though the world continues to move as it did, there does appear to be a change of weather.

  “We had only 300 names. But that was quite enough, considering all things, especially the respectability of the people, and the imperfection of the agitation, to make the address well worth presenting. Having gone so far, to hold back altogether would have been to confess that the attempt was a mere failure, which nobody can say it was. To hold it back past the time specified in the circulars and originally designed, for the chance of obtaining more signatures, would have been useless: people would have only said that though we boasted of the shortness of the time in which the signatures were collected, yet in fact we waited as long as there was any chance of gathering any more. And in point of fact they had begun to come in very slowly by Monday morning. At best, it could not have been improved into an effectual canvass, and as it is, it shows very well. Let any one put the two lists side by side, and then say, if the weight of opinion in Cambridge inclines one way, which way is it? I was doubtful of the expediency of stirring it at first, but I am now very glad that it has been done. I wish the Herald had printed the names. But it was an unlucky day, there being a great debate in both Houses.

  “Hare declined presenting; upon which H. Lushington, Venables, Micklethwaite, and myself (who had, in fact, been the chief actors), distributed ourselves into two cabs: and drove slap up to the Chancellor of Exchequer’s. Harry Lushington was the chief speaker, and did it very well and gracefully. Goulburn was, of course, gracious, but I should hardly have inferred that he was glad. However, he said he was; glad that this had been done, and glad that no more had been done; and (upon the whole) easy about the matter. The fever (he said) appeared to be gradually subsiding, and indeed the opposition was less formidable than might be supposed. ‘From what the gentleman said who presented the address on the other side, he gathered that it was for the most part a conscientious opposition, not arising from any political animosity.’ Certainly Punch cannot be said to beat Nature.”

  Nothing, however, diverted him from his great object. FitzGerald writes to Frederick Tennyson:

  Spedding, you know, does not change: he is now the same that he was fourteen years old when I first knew him at school, more than twenty years ago; wise, calm, bald, combining the best qualities of Youth and Age.

  But his calmness was not proof against the enthusiasm created by the advent of Jenny Lind in 1847. Again FitzGerald writes:

  All the world has been, as I suppose you have read, crazy about Jenny Lind.... Spedding’s cool blood was moved to hire stalls several times at an advanced rate.... I have never yet heard the famous Jenny Lind, whom all the world raves about. Spedding is especially mad about her, I understand: and, after that, is it not best for weaker vessels to keep out of her way? Night after night is that bald head seen in one particular position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable man has forgot Bacon and philosophy, and goes after strange women.

  His health, however, had been giving some cause for anxiety at this time to his old friend, who writes to Carlyle:

  Thank you for your account of Spedding: I had written however to himself, and from himself ascertained that he was out of the worst. But Spedding’s life is a very ticklish one.

  Hitherto Spedding had been working in his own way at Bacon’s life and letters without any idea of contributing to a complete edition of his works, but rather with the object of defending him against what he believed to be the injustice done him by Macaulay in his famous Essay. But in 1847 Mr. Leslie Ellis had been preparing an edition of Bacon’s philosophical works which was offered for publication to Messrs. Longman, and Spedding acted as intermediary.

  “Better, I think,” he writes to Thompson, “to be with the publishers than against them so long as one keeps the reins. Therefore I have written to Longman, reporting Ellis’s proposition, and recommending them to treat immediately with him upon those terms; for that if they get the philosophical works alone so edited, their edition will command the market, even if they do nothing but reprint the rest as they are. Whereas, if any other publisher should engage Ellis’s services for that portion, their trade edition would be worthless for ever. All which I believe to be true, and I hope will be conclusive. When that point is fixed there will be time enough to consider what else may be done. If they refuse the opportunity, I think I shall decline further connexion with the enterprise. My own project, as I never counted upon anything but expense from it, will not be much affected either way.”

  The result, as is well known, was a complete edition of Bacon’s works, in which Mr. Leslie Ellis undertook the philosophical, Mr. Douglas Heath the legal and professional, and Spedding the literary and miscellaneous, to which he afterwards added the life and letters. In the meantime he wrote, but never published, for his own satisfaction and that he might gather the opinions of his friends, Evenings with a Reviewer, the reviewer being Macaulay and the review his Essay on Bacon. In sending a copy to Dr. Whewell he says:

  It may seem absurd in a man to print a book, and yet to wish not only to keep it private, but also to prevent it from circulating privately. But after considering the matter carefully, with reference to what I may call the interest of the subject — I mean to the chance of making a successful and durable impression upon the popular opinion — I am satisfied that it would not be judicious to present the question to the public first in this form. It would probably provoke controversy. The result of the controversy would depend upon reviewers. Reviewers, until they have heard the evidence as well as the argument, are not in a condition to judge; yet unless the evidence be made easily accessible and bound up with the argument, they cannot be expected either to seek it out or to suspend their opinions, but will simply proceed to judgment without hearing it. In such a case, considering the strength of popular prepossessions and the tendency of the first blow at them to raise a dust of popular objections, the verdict would in the first instance go against me; and though I might appeal with a better chance to the second thoughts and the next generation, yet the appeal would be conducted at great disadvantage, because I should then stand in the position of an advocate with a personal interest in the cause. As it is, I hope in my division of Bacon’s works to set forth all the evidence clearly and impartially, so that everybody who has the book will have the means of judging for himself, and if I can get that credit for justice and impartiality which I mean to deserve, I do not much doubt the issue. But the first reception of the work, upon which in these times so much depends, will itself depend very much upon my coming before the public with a clear and unsuspected character: and this, if I should previously acquire the reputation (justly or not) of an advocate engaged to make good his own cause, I could not expect.

  FitzGerald, writing to Donne at the end of 1848, says of Evenings with a Reviewer:

  I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them; but most and best of all, Spedding. I have stolen his noble book away from him; noble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some adikology in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol: amica Veritas, sed magis, etc.

  And Donne in reply:

  I, too, have Spedding’s “glorious book,” which I prefer to any modern reading. Reading one of his “Evenings” is next to spending an evening with the author.

  Thompson, whose health had completely broken down in 1849, was undergoing the water-cure at Great Malvern, and early in 1850 Spedding writes to him:

  They tell me that a letter will find you at Great Malvern. Indeed, I had reason to think so before, for I had heard of you twice since you went thither; once from Spring Rice and once from Blakesley.... I have been stationary here since August, seeing nobody and hearing nothing, so you must not expect any news.... You want to know, perhaps, what I am about myself. I am at this moment sitting in an easy-chair with the ink on a table beside me, and the papers on a
blotting-board on my knee. On the little table beside me is first a leaden jar, bought long since to keep tobacco in, now holding snipe-shot. Next to it a pocket Virgil lying on its belly. On my left a ledge made for a lamp, on which are three different translations of Bacon’s Sapientia Veterum, and some loose pieces of paper destined in due time to be enriched with a fourth translation, of which I need say no more. Next to my little table stands a large round table, now quite uninhabitable by reason of the litter of books that has taken possession of it, as, for instance, another Virgil with English translation and notes, open, upon its back; a Dryden’s translation shut, and standing upright on its edge. A letter-clip holding a packet in brown-paper cover, inscribed “De sapientia veterum: translation.” A volume of Bacon standing shut on its edge. A Cruden’s Concordance; and near it, lying on its side and shut, Alford’s Greek Testament (an excellent book of immense industry, and very neat execution; good in all ways so far as I have looked, and so far as I can judge of what I see in such a matter; it seems as if one might find in it everything one can want to know about the four gospels, that an editor can tell one). Another volume of Bacon open, on its back; beneath it a folio Aristotle (!) also open, and beneath that again a huge old folio Demosthenes and Æschines (but this was brought down from the garret two days ago, and has not yet been put away). Many other things of the same kind; which, however, I cannot describe particularly without getting up, which I do not feel disposed to do. But I must not forget a striped box which belongs to my portmanteau, but serves here as a receptacle for loose papers, and stands on the table. Another table in the corner sustaining two vols. of Facciolati evidently out for use, reposing on a huge Hogarth which lies there because no bookcase is big enough to hold it, and itself reposes upon all the Naval Victories, flanked by a ball of string, an unopened packet of Bernard Barton’s remains, a Speed’s History of England, a ream of scribbling paper, and an Ainsworth. Under my chair lies my own dog Tip, who once went with you and me to the top of Ullock. Opposite stands a long narrow box containing bows, and hung about with quivers, belts, and other archery equipments. The chimney-piece is littered with disabled arrows. It is now half-past 3 P.M., I have a slight headache, due (I really believe) to a sour orange. The lake was yesterday frozen over with ice as smooth and transparent as glass. I had no skates, and to-day it is going either to thaw or to snow. I intended to buy a pair of skates last midsummer, but forgot. I have a great mind to go and buy a pair now. I leave you to gather the condition of my mind from the condition of my room. I am in truth doing very little. These family establishments are not favourable for work. I do not know how it is; the day seems as long, and one seems to have it all to oneself, but there are no hours in it. What becomes of half of them I cannot guess. Time leaks in a gentleman’s house.

  My father has had a bad cold this winter, which hung about him longer than usual, and made him both look and feel ill. But he has thrown it quite off and seems now to be as well [as] usual, which is very well. His sight grows worse as of course it must do; but as fast as it leaves him he learns to make less do, so that he does not appear to be much distressed by the gradual privation. His old bitch is dead, and his old mare retires upon a pension, a paddock, a horse-pond, and a house, all to herself, with a daily feed of corn. He is now very well mounted on a fast walking pony, borrowed from a neighbour, and has a boy to walk with him and two puppies. He looks after his farming affairs as usual, and does not at all believe that land can be ruined by plenty. In truth we hear little in these latitudes of the agricultural distress of which we see so much in the newspapers.

  I have not heard from Ellis since he left England, and I do not know exactly where he is. He talked of staying some time at Avignon. But I am so doubtful whether a letter would find him there that I do not care to write upon the chance. Our publishers seem to be quite easy in mind, and made no enquiries as to the rate of progress. If Ellis can be ready within two years, I shall have to stir myself in order to be ready with my contribution. But I expect a good year’s respite. I have finished the Henry VII., however, which is my principal labour; and I like very well what I have done.

  But all his plans were disarranged by Mr. Ellis’s illness. In the latter part of 1849, while travelling on the Riviera, Ellis had a severe attack of rheumatic fever, from which he never recovered, and which entirely disabled him for the work he had undertaken and in which he had made some progress. Spedding, therefore, had to take his place and edit as best he could Bacon’s Philosophical Works. He has explained very fully in the Preface to them the method he adopted, and the careful manner in which he kept Mr. Ellis’s work distinct. “Early in 1853,” he says, “I took the work in hand.” In the meanwhile he was to be found at his rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there FitzGerald visited him in April 1850.

  “Spedding is my sheet-anchor,” he says, “the truly wise and fine fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening, and there I believe Thackeray, Venables, etc. are to be. I hope not a large assembly, for I get shyer and shyer even of those I know.”

  “I was in London only for ten days this spring,” FitzGerald writes to Frederick Tennyson, “and those ten days not in the thick of the season.... The most pleasurable remembrance I had of my stay in town was the last day I spent there; having a long ramble in the streets with Spedding, looking at books and pictures; then a walk with him and Carlyle across the Park to Chelsea, where we dropped that Latter-Day Prophet at his house; then, getting upon a steamer, smoked down to Westminster; dined at a chop-house by the Bridge, and then went to Astley’s; old Spedding being quite as wise about the horsemanship as about Bacon and Shakespeare. We parted at midnight in Covent Garden, and this whole pleasant day has left a taste on my palate like one of Plato’s lighter, easier, and more picturesque dialogues.”

  In August he went into Suffolk to stay with FitzGerald and the Cowells at their home in Bramford, near Ipswich. FitzGerald again writes to Frederick Tennyson:

  I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, in their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say, in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume. For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some personal beauty to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of reflection in water; and I said then one never could look at the willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. How beastly this reads! As if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man, how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his plain assertion. For I really often cross him only to draw him out; and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to make shine at my own expense.

  In August 1851 he writes again to Frederick Tennyson:

  Almost the only man I hear from is dear old Spedding, who has lost his Father, and is now, I suppose, a rich man. This makes no apparent change in his way of life; he has only hired an additional Attic in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so as to be able to bed a friend upon occasion. I may have to fill it ere long.

  And a few months later:

  Spedding is immutably wise, good, and delightful; not as immutably well in Body, I think, though he does not complain.

  The great work went slowly on, but nothing as yet was published. Spedding had just taken over Ellis’s portion and was devoting himself to this. We get a glimpse of him again in FitzGerald’s letters:

  I saw old Spedding in London; only doubly calm after the death of a Niece he dearly loved, and whose death-bed at Hastings he had just been waiting upon.

  It was 1857 before the first three volumes appeared, followed by three others in 1858, and by the final volume in 1859. Ellis did not live to see the completion of the work, for he died in May of that year.

  FitzGerald, writing in 1857 to Cowell, who was now in Calcutta, from Portland Te
rrace, where he lived during his early married life, says:

  Spedding has been once here in near three months. His Bacon keeps coming out: his part, the Letters, etc., of Bacon, is not come yet; so it remains to be seen what he will do then, but I can’t help thinking he has let the Pot boil too long.

  It was 1861, however, before the first volume of the Life and Letters appeared, and Spedding found that he had already been forestalled by Hepworth Dixon in The Story of Lord Bacon’s Life. In a note to the earliest letter printed, probably the earliest specimen remaining of Bacon’s handwriting, he says, with quiet contempt:

  The copies of some of these letters lately published by Mr. Hepworth Dixon ... differ, I observe, very much from mine; most of them in the words and sense, more or less, and some in the name of the person writing, or the person written to, or both. But as mine are more intelligible, and were made with care and at leisure, and when my eyes were better than they are now, I do not suspect any material error in them, and have not thought it worth while to apply for leave to compare them again with the originals.

  “I am very glad,” FitzGerald writes to Thompson, “to hear old Spedding is really getting his share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it will be half as good as the “Evenings,” where Spedding was in the Passion which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.”

  Some three years later, he says:

  Spedding’s Bacon seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes carried; Thompson told me they had convinced him the other way; and that Ellis had long given up Bacon’s Defence before he died.

  And so it continued to the end. When the sixth volume appeared in 1872 FitzGerald wrote:

  And here is Spedding’s vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old Spedding’s pleading for him for ever; that is old Spedding’s simple statement of the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh business is quite delightful, better than Old Kensington.