Tennyson and His Friends Part 33

MEMORIES

By E. V. B.

How kind to ask for some of my few small memories of your father--treasured memories which no length of years can ever rub out. And how much I like to recall them, though, alas! there is so little; it was so seldom that we met in those unforgotten times. Once, I remember, I sent him a rose from my garden, a black beauty, rather rare in those old days--"L'Empereur de Maroque," now quite cut out by "Prince Camille de Rohan." I keep the little word of thanks that came afterwards in return:

MY DEAR E. V. B.--Many thanks for your more amiable than beautiful Black Rose. I don't mean to be personal, but am, yours always,

TENNYSON.

Another of his notes is the one wherein he gave me leave to ill.u.s.trate "The May Queen." His words in the note were: "I would rather you than any one else should do it." His poems were a joy to me, even in childhood--from the days when, dull lesson hours, etc., being done, I could steal away and no one know, and, sitting on the carpet by the home book-shelves, read over and over on the sly from a bound volume (one of _Blackwood's Magazines_), where were long extracts from Tennyson's poems, especially the earlier ones, and amongst them one called "Adeline." There was certainly a magic in the poetry, scarce found elsewhere--magic even for a child of ten.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUMMER-HOUSE AT FARRINGFORD, WHERE "ENOCH ARDEN" WAS WRITTEN. Carved and painted by Alfred Lord Tennyson.]

Do you remember how you used to tell me that your father had a great love for the red rose? He sent me, for my _Ros Rosarum_, lines on a Rosebud by himself:

THE ROSEBUD

The night with sudden odour reel'd, The southern stars a music peal'd, Warm beams across the meadow stole, For Love flew over grove and field, Said, "Open, Rosebud, open, yield Thy fragrant soul."

I know he loved the poet's colour--lilac. A long-past scene in the garden at Farringford still remains in the mind's eye fresh and vivid--painted in with memory's fast colours among the pictures of remembrance.

The suns.h.i.+ne of a morning at Farringford in early summer when we came up the long middle walk, bordered on either side with lilac-flowered aubretia, led up to the open summer-house where Tennyson, with two or three friends, sat in the sun, enjoying the warmth and the lovely lines of lilac. We turned towards the house after a time, going under the budding trees of the grove. There he pointed out some young bushes of Alexandrian laurel--the same, he told us, whose small narrow leaves were used to make the crown for victors in the Olympian games....

Then--can I ever forget?--that delightful evening at Aldworth, when, after dinner, he invited me to his room upstairs. There he smoked his pipe in his high-backed, cane arm-chair, while I sat near. On a little table by the fire were arranged several more of these well-smoked Dublin pipes.

Such a large, comfortable "smoke-room"!--with books about everywhere, on tables and chairs. Then he read to me aloud from "Locksley Hall." I think he read all the poem from the beginning to the end; and as Tennyson read on--one seemed almost to feel the pungent, salt sea-breeze blowing from over desolate seas--almost saw visions of the dreary sands lengthening far away. I remember I ventured to ask why the stanza which follows after that line, "And all the wonder that should be," was afterwards omitted:

In the hall there hangs a picture--Amy's arms about my neck, Happy children in a sunbeam, sitting on the ribs of wreck.

In my life there was a picture--she that clasp'd my neck is flown, I was left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone.

I began saying the lines, but he knew them quite well and repeated them. I can't think how it is, the answer he returned about this is now, alas!

forgot.... Such troublous years have come and gone since that happy Long-Ago. (The omitted stanza would have gone, too, had it not been written down for me by a long-lost friend, Sir Robert Morier.)

So the reading aloud went on, with talk between (and clouds of smoke!), until, I think, past eleven o'clock, when you opened the door, and that--for me--rare dream of poetry and charm abruptly broke.

I saw Tennyson, for the last time, as I followed down the wooded path at Aldworth, on his way to the garden door opening on the heath, his fine, big, Russian hound pacing closely after.

No--once more I saw him, his likeness with all the distinctness sometimes known in the slow-moving white clouds of some glorious autumn day. It was after the end had come, and not long before the grave in Westminster Abbey had received him. I was travelling home on the Great-Western from Somerset. Gazing up idly at the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude of sun-steeped silver clouds above, suddenly, clear and distinct, my eyes beheld the image of his n.o.ble profile as if lying back asleep; the eyes were closed, the head at rest upon the pillow--a sculptured cloud in a snowy cloudland, outlined upon an azure sky.... Not until after several minutes did the vision pa.s.s, slowly fading into the infinite blue.

TENNYSON AND HIS TALK ON SOME RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS

By the Right Rev. the BISHOP OF RIPON

Among the happy memories of my life, and they are many, the memory of the kindly welcome accorded to me at Aldworth and at Farringford must always possess a special charm. This will readily be understood by those of my own age; for Tennyson was a name to conjure with in the days of my youth.

Slowly but surely his influence crept into our lives: we read in text-books at school that the

Poet in a golden age was born, with golden stars above, Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love.

The thought and the words appealed to me from the first. Then, how I know not, we became familiar with part, at least, of "In Memoriam." Its phrases caught our fancy, and some of our early attempts at versification were cast in the same metre. Then came the "Idylls of the King," and I remember how, when the rest of the party went out one holiday afternoon, I stayed indoors and read the "Idylls" at one sitting. Thus in our youth Tennyson became poet and hero to us. Any one who had seen him or known him became for us invested with a kind of sacred and awful interest; my uncle who lived at Cheltenham grew greater in our eyes when we learned that he had corresponded with him.

Thus our hero-wors.h.i.+p grew. We knew indeed that there were those who did not welcome the coming Poet with ardour; we lived, in fact, through the age of his disparagement to the time of his unchallenged supremacy. It will be interesting, I think, to many to read the following letter written by Rev. Frederick W. Robertson when he was experiencing the freer and fresher intellectual atmosphere of Oxford after the stifling oppressiveness of Cheltenham:

I had nearly forgotten to tell you that Tennyson is deeply admired here by all the brilliant men. Stanley, our first genius, rates him highly; Hannah, who has guided nearly all the first and double-first cla.s.s men for the last three years to honours, told me he considers his poetical and psychological powers more varied than any poet he knows. And the "Dread," a choice selection of the most brilliant among the rising men, have p.r.o.nounced him to be the first poet of the day.

So you see I have some to keep me company in my judgment. And at all events he is above ridicule.

Pray inform Miss D---- of all this. One of our first professors raves about him.

When I went up to Cambridge in 1860, Tennyson was the oracle poet among the younger men; but the feeling of doubt still remained among the older men. I recall a friendly dispute between the Senior and a Junior Fellow of my own College. The elder man charged Tennyson with being "misty"; the younger man defended: the elder man cited a pa.s.sage from "In Memoriam,"

and challenged the younger to say what it meant. The elder man was so far successful that he drove the younger man to declare that though he could not explain it then, he hoped to enter into its meaning later on. It was a typical conflict; the older generation could not understand; the younger was under the spell of the Poet, and though unable to interpret everything, believed in Tennyson's message to his own age.

There were charges levelled against Tennyson more serious and more absurd than that of obscurity. The words Scepticism, Pantheism, and even Atheism were heard. One newspaper in a review of "In Memoriam" exclaimed: "Here the poet barely escapes Atheism and plunges into the abyss of Pantheism."

Another foolish writer, commenting on the lines:

But what am I?

An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry,

remarked, with superb _navete_, "May we remind Mr. Tennyson that the darkness is past and that the true light now s.h.i.+neth?" I remember, as late as 1867 or 1868, an evening party at Blackheath when the question was started--"Who is the greatest living poet?" To my amazement and amus.e.m.e.nt a self-satisfied, but very good man, instantly and oracularly replied, "Bonar--without doubt--Bonar." He meant that excellent and devout-minded man, the Rev. Horatius Bonar, the hymn-writer. These were, no doubt, extreme cases, but stupidity is always extreme. I recall these incidents because they are parts of the story which tells of the difficulties through which Tennyson fought the way to his throne. They serve to recall the prejudices which provoked the resentment and stimulated the attachment of those who, like myself, were brought early under the spell of his enchantment. His story repeated familiar features; he had at first a select circle of studious admirers; by degrees the general public became aware of the existence in their midst of a true poet. Then timid partisans awoke and demanded credentials of orthodoxy. Persons of this type did not like to be told that--

There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

But meanwhile he had drawn the younger generation to his side: they believed in him, and they were right. In spite of misunderstanding and misinterpretation, Tennyson followed the gleam: he would not stoop to make his judgment blind or prevaricate for popularity's sake. He beat his music out, and those who knew him, as I was privileged to do, during the later years of his life, could realize how truly he had made a larger faith his own.

It fell out naturally when I met him that conversation turned on religion or theological subjects. His mind, courageous, inquiring, honest, sought truth beyond the forms of truth. On the occasion of my first visit to Aldworth, in the smoking-room we talked of the problem of pain, of determinism, of apparent contradictions of faith. That night, indeed, we seemed to talk--

Of faith, free will, foreknowledge absolute.

But the impression left upon my mind was that we were engaged in no mere scholastic discussion; it was no mere intellectually satisfactory creed which was sought: it was something deeper and more abiding than anything which may be modified in form from age to age; the soul needs an anchorage, and to find it there must be no ignoring of facts and no juggling with them once they are found. In ill.u.s.tration of this I may relate how once, when walking with him among the heather-clad heights round Aldworth, he spoke of the apparent dualism in Nature: the forces of darkness and light seemed to meet in conflict. "If I were not a Christian," he said, "I should be perhaps a Pa.r.s.ee."[73] He felt, however, that if once we accepted the view that this life was a time of education, then the dark things might be found to have a meaning and a value. In the retrospect hereafter the pain and suffering would seem trivial. I think that this idea must have taken hold of his thought as we were conversing; for he suddenly stopped in his walk, and, standing amid the purple landscape, he declaimed the lines, then unpublished:

The Lord spake out of the skies To a man good and a wise: "The world and all within it Will be nothing in a minute."

Then a beggar began to cry: "Give me food or else I die."

Is it worth his while to eat, Or mine to give him meat, If the world and all within it Were nothing the next minute?

He once quoted to me Hinton's view that we were not in a position to judge the full meaning of life; that we were in fact looking at the wrong side of things. We saw the work from the underside, and we could not judge of the pattern which was perhaps clear enough on the upper side.

Next day I was able to remind him that he had approved this view of life.

He was not well, and I think that the darker aspects loomed larger in his mind; at any rate, he was speaking more gloomily than usual. When I remarked that G.o.d did not take away men till their work was done, he said, "He does; look at the promising young fellows cut off." Then I brought up Hinton's theory and ill.u.s.tration, and asked whether we could judge when a man had finished his appointed work. Immediately he acquiesced; the view evidently satisfied him.

He took a deep interest in those borderland questions which sometimes seem so near an answer and yet never are answered. At the hour of death what are the sights which rush upon the vision? Of these he would sometimes speak; he told me how William Allingham, when dying, said to his wife, "I see things beyond your imagination to conceive." Some vision seemed to come to such at death. One lady in the Isle of Wight exclaimed, as though she saw "Cherubim and Seraphim." But these incidents did not disturb the steady thought and trust which found its strength far deeper down than in any surface phenomena. He never s.h.i.+rked the hard and dismaying facts of life. Once he made me take to my room Winwoode Reade's _Martyrdom of Man_.

There never was such a pa.s.sionate philippic against Nature as this book contained. The universe was one vast scene of murder; the deep aspirations and n.o.ble visions of men were the follies of flies buzzing for a brief moment in the presence of inexorable destruction. Life was bottled suns.h.i.+ne; death the silent-footed butler who withdrew the cork. The book, with its fierce invective, had a strange rhapsodical charm. It put with irate and verbose extravagance the fact that sometimes