Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  The enchantress, Vivien, is one of that dubious company of Ladies of the Lake, now friendly, now treacherous. Probably these ladies are the fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken up into the more elaborate poetry of Cymric literature and mediaeval romance. Mr Rhys traces Vivien, or Nimue, or Nyneue, back, through a series of palaeographic changes and errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind of lady of the lake he thinks, but the identification is not very satisfactory. Vivien is certainly “one of the damsels of the lake” in Malory, and the damsels of the lake seem to be lake fairies, with all their beguilements and strange unstable loves. “And always Merlin lay about the lady to have her maidenhood, and she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of him, for she was afraid of him because he was a devil’s son. . . . So by her subtle working she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit of the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he came never out for all the craft he could do. And so she departed and left Merlin.” The sympathy of Malory is not with the enchanter. In the Idylls, as finally published, Vivien is born on a battlefield of death, with a nature perverted, and an instinctive hatred of the good. Wherefore she leaves the Court of King Mark to make mischief in Camelot. She is, in fact, the ideal minx, a character not elsewhere treated by Tennyson:-

  ”She hated all the knights, and heard in thought

  Their lavish comment when her name was named.

  For once, when Arthur walking all alone,

  Vext at a rumour issued from herself

  Of some corruption crept among his knights,

  Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair,

  Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood

  With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,

  And flutter’d adoration, and at last

  With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more

  Than who should prize him most; at which the King

  Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:

  But one had watch’d, and had not held his peace:

  It made the laughter of an afternoon

  That Vivien should attempt the blameless King.

  And after that, she set herself to gain

  Him, the most famous man of all those times,

  Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,

  Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,

  Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;

  The people call’d him Wizard; whom at first

  She play’d about with slight and sprightly talk,

  And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom’d points

  Of slander, glancing here and grazing there;

  And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer

  Would watch her at her petulance, and play,

  Ev’n when they seem’d unloveable, and laugh

  As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew

  Tolerant of what he half disdain’d, and she,

  Perceiving that she was but half disdain’d,

  Began to break her sports with graver fits,

  Turn red or pale, would often when they met

  Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him

  With such a fixt devotion, that the old man,

  Tho’ doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times

  Would flatter his own wish in age for love,

  And half believe her true: for thus at times

  He waver’d; but that other clung to him,

  Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.”

  Vivien is modern enough — if any type of character is modern: at all events there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in the old legends and romances. In these Merlin fatigues the lady by his love; she learns his arts, and gets rid of him as she can. His forebodings in the Idyll contain a magnificent image:-

  ”There lay she all her length and kiss’d his feet,

  As if in deepest reverence and in love.

  A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe

  Of samite without price, that more exprest

  Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,

  In colour like the satin-shining palm

  On sallows in the windy gleams of March:

  And while she kiss’d them, crying, ‘Trample me,

  Dear feet, that I have follow’d thro’ the world,

  And I will pay you worship; tread me down

  And I will kiss you for it’; he was mute:

  So dark a forethought roll’d about his brain,

  As on a dull day in an Ocean cave

  The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall

  In silence.”

  We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like “the blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall.”

  The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in Vivien, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily redeemed, and the picture of the ideal Court lying in full corruption. Next to Elaine, Jowett wrote that he “admired Vivien the most (the naughty one), which seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is most elegant and fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah beguiling the wise man; she is quite equal to it.” The dramatic versatility of Tennyson’s genius, his power of creating the most various characters, is nowhere better displayed than in the contrast between the Vivien and the Elaine. Vivien is a type, her adventure is of a nature, which he has not elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who admired the Idylls so enthusiastically, might have recognised in Vivien a character not unlike some of his own, as dark as Becky Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness than that Beatrix Esmond who is still a paragon, and, in her creator’s despite, a queen of hearts. In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has drawn a girl so innocently passionate, and told a tale of love that never found his earthly close, so delicately beautiful, that we may perhaps place this Idyll the highest of his poems on love, and reckon it the gem of the Idylls, the central diamond in the diamond crown. Reading Elaine once more, after an interval of years, one is captivated by its grace, its pathos, its nobility. The poet had touched on some unidentified form of the story, long before, in The Lady of Shalott. That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in human interest, could not compete with Elaine, if indeed any poem of Tennyson’s can be ranked with this matchless Idyll.

  The mere invention, and, as we may say, charpentage, are of the first order. The materials in Malory, though beautiful, are simple, and left a field for the poet’s invention.

  Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to encounter all comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is ill, and cannot go to the jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse that he is not healed of a wound. “Wherefore the King was heavy and passing wroth, and so he departed towards Winchester.” The Queen then blamed Lancelot: people will say they deceive Arthur. “Madame,” said Sir Lancelot, “I allow your wit; it is of late come that ye were wise.” In the Idyll Guinevere speaks as if their early loves had been as conspicuous as, according to George Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell. Lancelot will go to the tourney, and, despite Guinevere’s warning, will take part against Arthur and his own fierce Northern kinsmen. He rides to Astolat—”that is, Gylford” — where Arthur sees him. He borrows the blank shield of “Sir Torre,” and the company of his brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine “cast such a love unto Sir Lancelot that she would never withdraw her love, wherefore she died.” At her prayer, and for better disguise (as he had never worn a lady’s favour), Lancelot carried her scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve in his helmet, and left his shield in Elaine’s keeping. The tourney passes as in the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the favour he wears. The wounded Lancelot “thought to do what he might while he might endure.” When he is offered the prize he is so sore hurt that he “takes no force of no honour.” He rides into a wood, where Lavaine draws forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the hermit, once a knight. “I have seen the day,” says the hermit, “I would have loved him the worse, because he was against my lord, King Arthur,
for some time. I was one of the fellowship of the Round Table, but I thank God now I am otherwise disposed.” Gawain, seeking the wounded knight, comes to Astolat, where Elaine declares “he is the man in the world that I first loved, and truly he is the last that ever I shall love.” Gawain, on seeing the shield, tells Elaine that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and she goes to seek him and Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to Elaine, nor does Arthur rebuke him, as in the poem. When Guinevere heard that Lancelot bore another lady’s favour, “she was nigh out of her mind for wrath,” and expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the maid of Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended by Elaine. “‘But I well see,’ said Sir Bors, ‘by her diligence about you that she loveth you entirely.’ ‘That me repenteth,’ said Sir Lancelot. Said Sir Bors, ‘Sir, she is not the first that hath lost her pain upon you, and that is the more pity.’” When Lancelot recovers, and returns to Astolat, she declares her love with the frankness of ladies in mediaeval romance. “Have mercy upon me and suffer me not to die for thy love.” Lancelot replies with the courtesy and the offers of service which became him. “Of all this,” said the maiden, “I will none; for but if ye will wed me, or be my paramour at the least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days are done.”

  This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days of other manners. His art appears in the turn which he gives to Elaine’s declaration:-

  ”But when Sir Lancelot’s deadly hurt was whole,

  To Astolat returning rode the three.

  There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self

  In that wherein she deem’d she look’d her best,

  She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought

  ‘If I be loved, these are my festal robes,

  If not, the victim’s flowers before he fall.’

  And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid

  That she should ask some goodly gift of him

  For her own self or hers; ‘and do not shun

  To speak the wish most near to your true heart;

  Such service have ye done me, that I make

  My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I

  In mine own land, and what I will I can.’

  Then like a ghost she lifted up her face,

  But like a ghost without the power to speak.

  And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish,

  And bode among them yet a little space

  Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced

  He found her in among the garden yews,

  And said, ‘Delay no longer, speak your wish,

  Seeing I go to-day’: then out she brake:

  ‘Going? and we shall never see you more.

  And I must die for want of one bold word.’

  ‘Speak: that I live to hear,’ he said, ‘is yours.’

  Then suddenly and passionately she spoke:

  ‘I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.’

  ‘Ah, sister,’ answer’d Lancelot, ‘what is this?’

  And innocently extending her white arms,

  ‘Your love,’ she said, ‘your love — to be your wife.’

  And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Had I chosen to wed,

  I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine:

  But now there never will be wife of mine.’

  ‘No, no’ she cried, ‘I care not to be wife,

  But to be with you still, to see your face,

  To serve you, and to follow you thro’ the world.’

  And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Nay, the world, the world,

  All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart

  To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue

  To blare its own interpretation — nay,

  Full ill then should I quit your brother’s love,

  And your good father’s kindness.’ And she said,

  ‘Not to be with you, not to see your face -

  Alas for me then, my good days are done.’”

  So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest corpse, “and she lay as though she had smiled.” Her letter is read. “Ye might have showed her,” said the Queen, “some courtesy and gentleness that might have preserved her life;” and so the two are reconciled.

  Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of anger against Lancelot. “For since first I saw my lord, Sir Lancelot,” says Lavaine, “I could never depart from him, nor nought I will, if I may follow him: she doth as I do.” To the simple and moving story Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the prize of the tourney, and the manner of their finding:-

  ”For Arthur, long before they crown’d him King,

  Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,

  Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.

  A horror lived about the tarn, and clave

  Like its own mists to all the mountain side:

  For here two brothers, one a king, had met

  And fought together; but their names were lost;

  And each had slain his brother at a blow;

  And down they fell and made the glen abhorr’d:

  And there they lay till all their bones were bleach’d,

  And lichen’d into colour with the crags:

  And he, that once was king, had on a crown

  Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.

  And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,

  All in a misty moonshine, unawares

  Had trodden that crown’d skeleton, and the skull

  Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown

  Roll’d into light, and turning on its rims

  Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn:

  And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught,

  And set it on his head, and in his heart

  Heard murmurs, ‘Lo, thou likewise shalt be King.’”

  The diamonds reappear in the scene of Guinevere’s jealousy:-

  ”All in an oriel on the summer side,

  Vine-clad, of Arthur’s palace toward the stream,

  They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter’d, ‘Queen,

  Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy,

  Take, what I had not won except for you,

  These jewels, and make me happy, making them

  An armlet for the roundest arm on earth,

  Or necklace for a neck to which the swan’s

  Is tawnier than her cygnet’s: these are words:

  Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin

  In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it

  Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words,

  Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen,

  I hear of rumours flying thro’ your court.

  Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife,

  Should have in it an absoluter trust

  To make up that defect: let rumours be:

  When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust

  That you trust me in your own nobleness,

  I may not well believe that you believe.’

  While thus he spoke, half turn’d away, the Queen

  Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine

  Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off,

  Till all the place whereon she stood was green;

  Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand

  Received at once and laid aside the gems

  There on a table near her, and replied:

  ’It may be, I am quicker of belief

  Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake.

  Our bond is not the bond of man and wife.

  This good is in it, whatsoe’er of ill,

  It can be broken easier. I for you

  This many a year have done despite and wrong

  To one whom ever in my heart of hearts

  I did acknowledge nobler. What are these?

  Diamonds for me! they had been thrice
their worth

  Being your gift, had you not lost your own.

  To loyal hearts the value of all gifts

  Must vary as the giver’s. Not for me!

  For her! for your new fancy. Only this

  Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart.

  I doubt not that however changed, you keep

  So much of what is graceful: and myself

  Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy

  In which as Arthur’s Queen I move and rule:

  So cannot speak my mind. An end to this!

  A strange one! yet I take it with Amen.

  So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls;

  Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down:

  An armlet for an arm to which the Queen’s

  Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck

  O as much fairer — as a faith once fair

  Was richer than these diamonds — hers not mine -

  Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself,

  Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will -

  She shall not have them.’

  Saying which she seized,

  And, thro’ the casement standing wide for heat,

  Flung them, and down they flash’d, and smote the stream.

  Then from the smitten surface flash’d, as it were,

  Diamonds to meet them, and they past away.

  Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain

  At love, life, all things, on the window ledge,

  Close underneath his eyes, and right across

  Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge

  Whereon the lily maid of Astolat

  Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night.”

  This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old tale, in which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen upon the jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. “This is not the first time,” said Sir Lancelot, “that ye have been displeased with me causeless, but, madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force” (that is, “I disregard”).

  The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make Lancelot the man we love, not Arthur or another. Human nature perversely sides with Guinevere against the Blameless King:-