Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series
Page 252
“In 1851 he succeeded Wordsworth as poet-laureate, and about the same time he married, and retired to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he resided until 1869, when he removed to Petersfield, Hampshire.”
In the biographical supplement of the Americanized Britannica, this becomes two or three sentences, viz.:
“He was made poet-laureate in 1851. It was about this time, too, that Tennyson married, returning to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he lived until 1869.... It was in this year the poet moved from the Isle of Wight and took up his residence in Petersfield, Hampshire.”
There are similar passages in Appleton’s and Johnson’s cyclopedias. It is perfectly plain that there was not much independent investigation in these unscholarly performances.
MISTAKES.
Mistake No. 1: Tennyson received the Laureateship in 1850, the year of Wordsworth’s death. Mistake No. 2: he was married June 13, 1850. Mistake No. 3: Farringford is misspelled. Mistake No. 4: Tennyson lived at Twickenham three years after his marriage. Mistake No. 5: in 1853, he first took possession of Farringford, which is still his winter residence. Mistake No. 6: in 1867, the poet built a house near Haslemere in Surrey — not at Petersfield, Hampshire — where he spends the summer months. According to Prof. Church, the Laureate bought the Aldworth estate in 1872. The latter date is manifestly wrong.
The story of Tennyson’s Petersfield establishment may be classed as a myth, though supported by several monuments of research called cyclopedias.
Nothing is said of a Hampshire home in Jennings’ Life of Tennyson, in Church’s Laureate’s Country, or in Van Dyke’s admirable book on the Poetry of Tennyson; no reference to it is found in the essays on Tennyson by Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Nor is Lord Tennyson’s name found in the list of land owners of Hampshire, in Walford’s County Families of the United Kingdom. One is puzzled to understand how such a report started.
TENNYSON’S ELEVATION TO THE PEERAGE.
It is rather surprising to read in the People’s Cyclopedia, Johnson’s, Lippincott’s and elsewhere, that Tennyson was raised to the peerage in 1883 as “Baron d’Eyncourt,” etc. This he cannot properly be called, though a descendant from the ancient house of D’Eyncourt — which long ago ceased to be a barony. The pedigree of Alfred’s grandfather, who belonged to the Lincolnshire gentry, is traced through ten generations to Edmund, Duke of Somerset, and two centuries further back to Edward III.’s fourth son, John of Gaunt. Dr. Tennyson died in the lifetime of his father, and the D’Eyncourt seat and dignity passed to his younger brother Charles. The poet’s cousin Louis Charles is the present possessor of the family estate at Bayons. England’s noble Laureate (according to Burke’s Peerage, ed. of 1888, p. 1361) was created a peer of the realm Jan. 24, 1884, with the new title — Baron of Aldworth, Surrey, and of Farringford, Isle of Wight. He took his seat in the House of Lords, Mar. 11, 1884.
LAPSES IN ENGLISH GEOGRAPHY.
A common mistake is that of locating Aldworth in Sussex. Mr. Frederick Dolman, in the Ladies’ Home Journal (August, 1891), carelessly speaks of “the poet’s residences in the fair Isle and sunny Sussex.” According to Murray’s Handbook for Surrey (ed. of 1888, p. 182), and other excellent authorities, Aldworth is in the county of Surrey — not far from the northern borders of Sussex. In Walford’s County Families of the United Kingdom, p. 1203, Lord Tennyson’s name occurs among the land owners of Surrey — not with those of Sussex.
Somersby and Somerby have been mixed by many people who are not familiar with English geography. The latter village is in the western part of Lincolnshire, near Grantham — a considerable distance from Alfred Tennyson’s birthplace. Duyckinck, in his Eminent Men and Women, recklessly says he was born at “Somerby, a small parish in Leicestershire.”
If Europeans are guilty of crass ignorance of the United States, Americans too are open to criticism for their hazy notions of foreign places. An inexcusable blunder is that in Phillips’ Popular Manual of English Literature, vol. II., p. 497, where Blackdown is loosely referred to as “a hill in the vicinity of Petersfield, Hampshire.” Another writer is remiss in accepting statements implicitly and without question. A footnote in Kellogg’s school edition of “In Memoriam,” p. 23, says “Hallam was buried in Cleveland Church on the Severn, which empties into British Channel.” If he had looked up the town for himself on the map of England, he would have discovered that Clevedon, the birthplace of Hallam, is situated on the bank of the Severn near its entrance to the Bristol Channel.
VARIOUS ERRORS.
It is not my purpose to enumerate all the errors that I have come across in my reading relating to Tennyson and his works. For the sake of brevity, I merely correct a few of them without giving full particulars in every case. Tennyson first visited the Pyrenees in 1830 — not in 1831; the second visit was in 1862. He received the degree of D. C. L. in 1855 — not in 1859. His son Hallam was born at Twickenham, Aug. 11, 1852; Lionel, at Freshwater, Mar. 16, 1854.
Tennyson did not write “Break, break, break” at Clevedon or Freshwater. The intercalary lyrics of “The Princess” were first published in the third edition — not in the second. The plot of “The Cup” is taken from Plutarch’s treatise De Mulierum Virtutibus; this work has been confused by Archer and Jennings with Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus.
Many unpardonable mistakes have been made in dating Tennyson’s published writings, also in wording and punctuating their titles. It has been said that “The Princess” first appeared in print in 1846 and 1849; “In Memoriam,” in 1849 and 1851; “Idyls of the King,” in 1855, 1858, and 1861; “Enoch Arden,” in 1865; “The Holy Grail, and Other Poems,” in 1867 and 1870; “Harold,” in 1877; “Becket,” in 1879 and 1885; “Tiresias, and Other Poems,” in 1886; and “Demeter, and Other Poems,” in 1890. In Hart’s Manual of English Literature, one of Tennyson’s poems is named “The Vision of Art,” and a recent German cyclopedia makes him the author of “Tristam and Iseult.” A newspaper account of the sale of Tennysoniana in London contains the queer bit of misinformation that Poems by Two Brothers “was published by Louth in 1826.” These slips could have been easily avoided. The mystery hanging about the Laureate’s life does not involve his works.
It is believed that the following list, which has been carefully verified, is correct both as to the titles and the dates of first publication of all of Tennyson’s books, viz:
Westminster Abbey, London — Tennyson’s final resting place
Tennyson’s grave in Poets Corner, covered with flowers shortly after the burial
Tennyson’s grave
Table of Contents
The Poetry Collections
POEMS, BY TWO BROTHERS
TIMBUCTOO : A POEM
POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL
POEMS, 1832
THE LOVER’S TALE. A FRAGMENT.
POEMS, 1842
MISCELLANEOUS CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS, 1831-1868
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY
IN MEMORIAM A. H. H.
MAUD, AND OTHER POEMS
IDYLLS OF THE KING
ENOCH ARDEN AND OTHER POEMS
BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS
TIRESIAS AND OTHER POEMS
LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER, ETC.
DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS
THE DEATH OF ŒNONE, AND OTHER POEMS
The Poems
LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
The Plays
QUEEN MARY: A DRAMA
HAROLD: A DRAMA
BECKET
THE CUP: A TRAGEDY
THE FALCON
THE PROMISE OF MAY
THE FORESTERS: ROBIN HOOD AND MAID MARIAN
The Biographies
TENNYSON AND HIS FRIENDS by Hallam, Lord Tennyson
ALFRED TENNYSON by Andrew Lang
TENNYSON’S LIFE AND POETRY by Eugene Parsons
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