Tennyson and His Friends Part 16

Tennyson's house at Twickenham to attend the christening of Hallam their eldest son.

Being _themselves_, when men, such as these two men, appreciate each other's work, they know, with their great instinct for truth and directness, what to admire--smaller people are apt to admire the men rather than the work. When Tennyson and my Father met, it was as when knights meet in the field.

How my Father appreciated the _Idylls_ will be seen from the following letter, which came as an answer to his own:[25]

FARRINGFORD, I.W.

MY DEAR THACKERAY--Should I not have answered you ere this 6th of November! surely; what excuse--none that I know of; except indeed that perhaps your very generosity--boundlessness of approval--made me in a measure shamefaced. I could scarcely accept it, being, I fancy, a modest man and always more or less doubtful of my own efforts in any line; but I may tell you that your little note gave me more pleasure than all the journals and monthlies and quarterlies which have come across me, not so much from being the Great Novelist, I hope, as from your being my good old friend--or perhaps of your being both of these in one. Well--let it be. I have been ransacking all sorts of old alb.u.ms and sc.r.a.p-books, but cannot find anything worthy sending you.

Unfortunately, before your letter arrived, I had agreed to give Macmillan the only available poem I had by me. I don't think he would have got it (for I dislike publis.h.i.+ng in magazines), except that he had come to visit me in my island, and was sitting and blowing his weed _vis-a-vis_....

Whenever you feel your brains as "the remainder biscuit," or indeed whenever you will, come over to me and take a blow on these downs where the air, as Keats said, "is worth sixpence a pint," and bring your girls too.--Yours always,

A. TENNYSON.

I can remember all my Father's pleasure when Alfred Tennyson gave him "t.i.thonus" for one of the early numbers of the _Cornhill Magazine_.

He was once at Farringford, but this was before the time of the _Cornhill_.

From America, where people store their kindly records and from whence so many echoes of the past are apt to reach us again,--some in worthy, and some, I fear, in less worthy voices,--I have received from time to time, the gift of an hour from the past, vivid and unalloyed. One day in the _Century_ magazine, I came upon a page which retold for me the whole story of a happy hour and of my Father's affectionate regard for that chivalrous American, Bayard Taylor, who came to see him, and for whom he had wished to do his best, by sending him to Farringford. All this came back to me when Alfred Tennyson's letter was reproduced in the _Century_, his charming answer to my Father, and my Father's own note in the margin....

Bayard Taylor himself has put the date to it all--June 1857.

My Father writes to Bayard Taylor:

MY DEAR B. T.--I was so busy yesterday that I could not keep my agreeable appointment with Thompson, and am glad I didn't fetch you to Greenwich. Here's a note which concerns you and I am ever yours,

W. M. T.

The letter from Lord Tennyson runs as follows:

FARRINGFORD, I.W.

MY DEAR THACKERAY--Your American friend and poet-traveller has never arrived; he has, I suppose, changed his mind. I am sure I should have been very glad to see him, for my castle was never yet barricaded and entrenched against good fellows. I write now, this time to say that after the 30th I shall not be here.

My best remembrances to your daughters, whom I have twice seen, once as little girls, and again a year or so back.--Yours ever,

A. TENNYSON.

Afterwards Bayard Taylor found his way to Farringford, and he has written a happy account of the visit.[26]

I hardly know whether or not to give the record of a meeting which I myself remember. Once after a long visit to Freshwater I returned home to Palace Green, and hearing that Alfred Tennyson had come up soon after to stay for a few days at Little Holland House close by, I told my Father, and together we planned a visit, to which I eagerly looked forward, with much pride and youthful excitement. It was not far to walk, the high road leads straight to Holland House, in the grounds of which Little Holland House then stood among the trees. Mr. and Mrs. Prinsep were living there and Mr. Watts. When we reached the House and were let in, we saw Mr. Watts in his studio; he seemed to hesitate to admit us; then came the ladies.

Mr. Tennyson was upstairs, we were told, not well. He had hurt his s.h.i.+n.

"He did not wish for visitors, nevertheless certainly we were to go up,"

they said, and we mounted into a side wing by some narrow staircase and came to a door, by which cans of water were standing in a row. As we entered, a man-servant came out of the little room.

Tennyson was sitting in a chair with his leg up, evidently ill and out of spirits.

"I am sorry to find you laid up," said my Father.

"They insisted upon my seeing the doctor for my leg," said Alfred, "and he prescribed cold water dressing."

"Yes," said my Father, "there's nothing like it, I have tried it myself."

And then no more! No high conversation--no quotations--no recollections.

After a minute or two of silence we came away. My tall Father tramped down the little wooden staircase followed by a bitterly disappointed audience.

When I was writing that same magazine article from which I have already given an extract, I asked Edward FitzGerald if he could help me, and if I might quote anything from his letters and from _Euphranor_:

"MY DEAR ANNE RITCHIE"--Mr. FitzGerald wrote--"Your letter found me at Aldburgh on our coast where I come to hear my old sea talk to me, as more than sixty years ago, and to get a blow out on his back. Pray quote anything you please, provided with Alfred's permission and no compliments to the author.

"I do not think my _fanfaron_ about him would be of any such service as you suppose; strangers usually take all that as the flourish of a friendly adviser, and would rather have some facts, such as that perhaps of his words about the Raphael and the little Hallam's wors.h.i.+p of the bed-post.[27] I suppose it was in 1852 at Seaford near Brighton. I can swear absolutely and can now hear and see him as he said it; so don't let him pretend to gainsay or modify that, whether he may choose to have it quoted or not.

"Ah, I have often thought that I might have done some good service if I had kept to him and followed him and noted the fine true things which fell from his lips on every subject, practical or aesthetic, as they call it.

"Bayard Taylor, in some essays lately published, quotes your Father saying that Tennyson was the wisest man he knew--which, by the way, would tell more in America than all I could write or say.

"Your finding it hard to make an article about A. T. will excuse my inability to help you, as you asked. I did not know (as in the case of your Father also) where to begin or how to go on without a beginning.--Ever yours,

E. F. G."

In 1863, just after our Father's death, my sister and I came to Freshwater. It seemed to us that perhaps there more than anywhere else we might find some gleam of the light of our home, with the friend who had known him and belonged to his life and whom he trusted.

We arrived late in the afternoon. It was bitter weather, the snow lying upon the ground. Mrs. Cameron had lent us a cottage, and the fires were already burning, and as we rested aimlessly in the twilight, we seemed aware of a tall figure standing in the window, wrapped in a heavy cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat. This was Tennyson, who had walked down to see us in silent sympathy.

TENNYSON ON HIS FRIENDS OF LATER LIFE

TO W. C. MACREADY

1851

Farewell, Macready, since to-night we part; Full-handed thunders often have confessed Thy power, well-used to move the public breast.

We thank thee with our voice, and from the heart.

Farewell, Macready, since this night we part, Go, take thine honours home; rank with the best, Garrick and statelier Kemble, and the rest Who made a nation purer through their art.

Thine is it that our drama did not die, Nor flicker down to brainless pantomime, And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see.