Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Dr. Tennyson married Miss Elizabeth Fytche, August 6, 1805. Their first child, George, died in infancy. According to the parish registers, the Tennyson family consisted of eleven children, viz.: Frederick, Charles, Alfred, Mary, Emily, Edward, Arthur, Septimus, Matilda, Cecilia and Horatio. They formed a joyous, lively household — amusements being agreeably mingled with their daily tasks. They were all handsome and gifted, with marked mental traits and imaginative temperaments. They were especially fond of reading and story-telling. At least four of the boys were addicted to verse-writing — a habit they kept up through life, though Alfred alone devoted himself to a poetical career as something more than a pastime. Frederick Tennyson’s occasional pieces are characterized by luxuriant fancy and chaste diction; the sonnets of Charles won high praise from Coleridge, but the fame of both has been overshadowed by that of their distinguished brother.

  The scholarly clergyman, who was an M. A. of Cambridge, carefully attended to the education and training of his children. He turned his gifts and accomplishments to good account in stimulating their mental growth. Alfred was sent to the Louth Grammar School four years (1816-20). During this time he presumably learned something, although no flattering reports of his progress have come down to us. Then private teachers were employed by Dr. Tennyson to instruct his boys, but he took upon himself for the most part the burden of fitting them for college. Only a moderate amount of study was imposed by the rector. A great deal of the time Alfred was out of doors, rambling through the pastures and woods about Somersby and Bag Enderby. He was solitary, not caring to mingle with other boys in their sports. As a child, he exhibited the same peculiarities which characterized the man. He was shy and reserved, moody and absent-minded. Alfred and Charles were devotedly attached to each other, and frequently were together in their walks. The lads were both large and strong for their age. Charles was a popular boy in Somersby on account of his frank, genial disposition — which cannot be said of the reticent Alfred.

  One incident connected with the poet’s education at home is worth repeating. His father required him to memorize the odes of Horace and to recite them morning by morning until the four books were gone through. The Laureate in later years testified to the value of this practice in cultivating a delicate sense for metrical music. He called Horace his master. Certainly no other bard has ever excelled Tennyson in the art of expressing himself in melodious verse.

  From his twelfth to his sixteenth year, Alfred was apparently idle much of the time, yet he was unconsciously preparing for his life-work. He was gathering material and storing up impressions which were afterwards utilized. It was with him a formative period. The hours he spent strolling in lanes and woods were not wasted. The quiet, meditative boy lived in a realm of the imagination, and his thoughts and fancies took shape in crude poems.

  This period of day-dreaming was followed by one of marked intellectual activity. The thin volume — Poems by Two Brothers, printed in 1826, contained the pieces written by Alfred when he was only sixteen or seventeen. It shows that these were busy years. The Tennyson youths not only scribbled a great deal of verse — they ranged far and wide in the fields of ancient and modern literature. Their father had a good library, and they appreciated its treasures. In the footnotes of their first book were many curious bits of information, and quotations from the classics.

  The Tennyson children were fortunate in having cultured parents. They were favored in another respect. Dr. Tennyson was comfortably well off for a clergyman. His means — which he shrewdly husbanded — enabled the family to spend the summers at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast. Thus Alfred’s passion for the sea was early developed. For some time it was the rector’s custom to occupy a dwelling in Louth during the school year. In this way the seclusion and monotony of Somersby life were broken. The young Tennysons saw considerable of the world. They were often welcomed in the home of their grandmother, Mrs. Fytche, in Westgate Place, and occasionally visited the stately mansion at Bayons. Especially Charles and Alfred were at times the guests of their great-uncle Samuel Turner, vicar of Grasby and curate of Caistor, who afterwards left his property and parish livings to his favorite, Charles Tennyson Turner. Such were the experiences of the Laureate’s youth and childhood, which inevitably influenced his whole life and entered into his poetry. He illustrates the truth that a poet is largely what his environment makes him.

  Byron exercised a magical spell over him in his teens, and this influence is apparent in his boyish rhymes which are tinged with Byronic melancholy. Afterwards Keats gained the ascendency. As a colorist, Tennyson owes much to this gorgeous word-painter, whom he has equaled, if not surpassed, in his own field.

  Alfred, in his boyhood, gave unmistakable indications of genius. During his university course at Cambridge, he was generally looked upon as a superior mortal, of whom great things were expected by his teachers and fellow-collegians. Dr. Whewell, his tutor, treated him with unusual respect.

  While at Trinity college (1828-31) he formed friendships which lasted till death ended them one by one. It was indeed a company of choice spirits with whom Tennyson had the good fortune to be associated. Among them were Thackeray, Helps, Garden, Sterling, Thompson, Kinglake, Maurice, Kemble, Milnes, Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Merivale, Spedding and others. Besides these, he numbered among the friends of his early manhood Fitzgerald, Hare, Hunt, Carlyle, Gladstone, Rogers, Landor, Forster, the Lushingtons and other famous scholars and men of letters.

  In the companionship of such men, he found the stimulus necessary for the development of his poetical faculty. They all regarded him with feelings of warmest admiration. The young poet had at least a few appreciative readers during the ten or twelve years of obscurity when the public cared little for his writings. He was encouraged by their words of commendation to pursue the bard’s divine calling, to which he was led by an overmastering instinct. He could afford to wait and smile at his slashing reviewers. Meanwhile he profited by the suggestions of his critics. In this respect he presents a striking contrast to Browning. He mercilessly subjected his productions to the most painstaking revision. He attempted various styles, and experimented with all sorts of metres. Thus he served his laborious apprenticeship and acquired a mastery of his art. His eminent success has confirmed the expectations of his youthful admirers.

  During his stay at Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam, a son of the historian. Hallam, who was a young man of extraordinary promise, became the dearest of his friends — more to him than brother. Their intimate fellowship was strengthened by Arthur’s love for the poet’s sister. It was his strongest earthly attachment. In 1830, the two friends traveled through France together, and stopped a while in the Pyrenees. On revisiting these mountains long afterward, the Laureate, overcome by reminiscences of other days, wrote the affecting lines entitled “In the Valley of Cauteretz”:

  All along the valley, stream that flashest white,

  Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,

  All along the valley, where thy waters flow,

  I walk’d with one I loved two and thirty years ago.

  For all along the valley, while I walk’d to-day,

  The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;

  For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,

  Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,

  And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,

  The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

  In 1833, the sudden death of Hallam, then Emily’s betrothed, produced on Alfred’s mind a deep and ineffaceable impression. While brooding over his sorrow, the idea came to him of expressing his emotions in verse which might be a fitting tribute to the dead. At different times and amid widely varying circumstances, were composed the elegiac strains and poetic musings that make up “In Memoriam,” a poem representing many moods and experiences. It is a work occupying a place apart in literature. Its merits and defects are peculiar. There is no other ele
gy like it, and it may be doubted whether a second In Memoriam will ever be written. Tennyson erected an appropriate and imperishable monument to the memory of his lost friend. In conferring immortality upon his beloved Arthur, he gained it for himself. His best claim on the future is to be known and remembered as the author of “In Memoriam,” his masterpiece.

  Equally enduring is the melodious wail—”Break, break, break,” one of the sweetest dirges in all literature. Hallam was buried (Jan. 3, 1834) at Clevedon by the Severn, near its entrance to the Bristol Channel, within sound of the melancholy waves. Singularly this exquisite song, which breathes of the sea, was not composed here, but “in a Lincolnshire lane at five o’clock in the morning,” as the Laureate himself has declared. It was written within a year after Hallam’s death, Sept. 15, 1833.

  Not much has been learned of Tennyson’s early manhood. No very definite picture can be formed of his life after he left college. He seldom wrote letters. Even his most intimate friends could not succeed in carrying on a correspondence with him. What happened to him is not, however, all a blank. A few scraps relating to his history are found in the letters of Carlyle, Fitzgerald, Milnes and others. A number of autobiographical fragments are sprinkled through the poems which he wrote between 1830 and 1850, but they refer more to his spiritual development than to the outward events which constitute memoirs.

  Mrs. Tennyson and her family continued to live at the Rectory after her husband died, March 16, 1831. In the autumn of 1835, she removed to High Beach, Epping Forest, (“In Memoriam,” CII., CIV., CV.), and about 1840 to Well Walk, Hampstead. Here she made her home the rest of her life with her sister, Mary Ann Fytche — nearly all of her sons and daughters having married and scattered. She died February 21, 1865, at the age of eighty-four.

  Alfred’s university career was cut short by his father’s death. For some years he remained at home — a diligent student of books and a close observer of nature. He roamed back and forth between Somersby and London, alternately in solitude and with his friends. Fitzgerald tells of his visiting with Tennyson at the Cumberland home of James Spedding in 1835.

  Here Alfred would spend hour after hour reading aloud “Morte d’Arthur” and other unpublished poems, which his scholarly friend criticized. In 1838, he was a welcome member of the Anonymous Club in London, and for several years he had rooms in this city at various intervals. It was his custom to make long incursions through the country on foot, studying the landscapes of England and Wales and pondering many a lay unsung. Thus he became familiar with the natural features of the places illustrated in his poems with such pictorial fidelity and vividness, though not with photographic accuracy.

  Through this long period he was unknown to the great world. He lived modestly, though not in actual want. His books brought him no substantial returns till long after 1842. There was but little left of his patrimony, if any, when he was granted a pension of £200 in 1845. This timely aid was obtained for him by Sir Robert Peel, chiefly through the influence of Carlyle and Milnes.

  Henceforth fortune graciously smiled upon him and made amends for past neglect. His reputation was becoming well established, and new editions of his poems were being called for. The Queen chanced to pick up one of his earlier volumes, and was charmed with the simple story of “The Miller’s Daughter.” She procured a copy of the book for the Princess Alice; this incident, it is related, brought him into favor with the aristocracy and gave a tremendous impetus to his popularity. After the death of Wordsworth in 1850, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate. Since then he has been highly esteemed by the royal family, and has produced in their honor some spirited odes and stately dedications.

  The poet married (June 13, 1850) Miss Emily Sellwood, of Horncastle, whom he had known from childhood. Her mother was a sister of Sir John Franklin, and her youngest sister was the wife of Charles Tennyson Turner. Two or three years they lived at Twickenham, where Hallam Tennyson was born in 1852. Together they visited Italy in 1851, and vivid memories of their travels are recalled in “The Daisy,” addressed to his wife. This interesting poem, written at Edinburgh, was suggested by the finding of a daisy in a book — the flower having been plucked on the Splugen and placed by Mrs. Tennyson between the leaves of a little volume as a memento of their Italian journey. The poet’s fancy was stirred and revived the delicious hours —

  In lands of palm and southern pine;

  In lands of palm, of orange blossom,

  Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

  Those who are familiar with Tennyson’s poems know how exalted is his ideal of woman as wife and mother. Lady Tennyson seems to have met the poet’s exacting requirements almost perfectly. What sort of helpmeet she has been he lovingly portrayed in the “Dedication,” — a tender tribute that was fully deserved. “His most lady-like, gentle wife,” Fitzgerald called her. Of superior education and talent, she was a worthy companion for an author. A number of her husband’s songs she has set to music. She has never sought public recognition. Content with the round of duties in a domestic sphere, she has lived for husband and children. Their married life has been exceptionally harmonious.

  In 1852, the Laureate’s largely increasing income enabled him to purchase an estate of more than four hundred acres near Freshwater, Isle of Wight. In the lines, “To the Rev. F. D. Maurice,” dated January, 1854, the poet depicts his pleasant life in this delightful retreat:

  Where, far from noise and smoke of town,

  I watch the twilight falling brown

  All round a careless-order’d garden

  Close to the ridge of a noble down.

  You’ll have no scandal while you dine,

  But honest talk and wholesome wine,

  And only hear the magpie gossip

  Garrulous under a roof of pine:

  For groves of pine on either hand,

  To break the blast of winter, stand;

  And further on, the hoary Channel

  Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.

  In 1855, Tennyson received the honorary degree of D. C. L. from Oxford. His prosperity continued — there being considerable profits from judicious investments and immense sales of his books. In 1867, he bought an estate near Haslemere, Surrey, “for the purpose of enjoying inland air and scenery.” Here he built a fine Gothic mansion, which is an ideal residence for a poet. Aldworth House is situated far up on Blackdown Heath, and overlooks a lovely valley. It is near the northern border of Sussex. “The prospect from the terrace of the house,” says Church, “is one of the finest in the south of England.” The poet thus pictures the place which has been his summer home for more than twenty years:

  Our birches yellowing and from each

  The light leaf falling fast,

  While squirrels from our fiery beech

  Were bearing off the mast,

  You came, and look’d, and loved the view

  Long-known and loved by me,

  Green Sussex fading into blue

  With one gray glimpse of sea.

  In 1883, the Laureate had amassed property estimated to be worth £200,000. He was offered and accepted a peerage during the latter part of this year, and became Baron of Aldworth and Farringford, January 24, 1884. He took his seat in the House of Lords March 11. In 1865, he declined a baronetcy offered by the Queen as a reward for his loyal devotion to the Crown. Whatever distinction may attach to the honorable name of Lord Tennyson, the majority of his numerous readers prefer to call him plain Alfred Tennyson.

  It may not be widely known that Baron Tennyson has a splendid lineage, of which he has modestly kept silent, unlike Byron. According to a writer in the St. James’ Gazette, who traced his ancestry back to Norman times, Tennyson is descended from an illustrious house of “princes, soldiers, and statesmen, famous in British or European history.” Some of his remote relatives were crowned heads — one being the celebrated Malcolm III. of Scotland. In Tennyson’s descent “two lines are blended,” says Church, “the middle class line of the Tennysons, an
d the noble and even royal line of the D’Eyncourts.”

  Alfred’s uncle, the Right Hon. Charles Tennyson-D’Eyncourt of Bayons Manor in Lincolnshire, was a man of marked ability and culture, who held various public offices, and represented several boroughs in parliament from 1818 to 1852. Since his death, in 1861, the family estate has successively passed to his three sons — George Hildyard, Admiral Edwin Clayton, C. B. (1871), and Louis Charles (1890), the present inheritor of the D’Eyncourt seat and dignity.

  The poet’s last years have been clouded by the bereavement of many old friends and relatives. Septimus, Charles, Mary, Emily, and Edward are dead. He suffered a severe blow in the death of his second son Lionel, while on the homeward voyage from India. He mourns his loss in the touching stanzas—”To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava.”

  Lord Tennyson was the recipient of many congratulations on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, August 6, 1889. The same year was marked by the publication of a new volume of poems, which attest that his intellectual vigor is unimpaired by age or bodily weakness. A dainty little poem of his—”To Sleep” — was published in the New Review for March, 1891, and it is not improbable that others will see the light in the near future.

  Tennyson’s health, though quite robust for an octogenarian, has been broken of late. In the spring of 1890, he was troubled with a grievous illness, the result of exposure to cold — he having persisted in taking his “daily two hours’ walk along the cliff” in all kinds of weather. It was expected that the poet would spend the following winter in the South to avoid the rigorous climate of the Isle of Wight, but he recovered sufficient strength to remain at Farringford House amid the scenes he loves so well.