Tennyson and His Friends Part 44

Fitz's box, which is about as large as a tailor's box for a single suit, contains a drawing of Thackeray's, an ill.u.s.tration of the "Lord of Burghley," a pretty sketch of the landskip-painter and the village maiden. He sent it here under the vain delusion that whenever you happened to come to London I should be sure to know. And I presume he sent word to you of what he had done, for he did not ask me to communicate the fact. I was only to write to _him_ in case the box did _not_ arrive, and as the box did arrive I did not write. If you will let me know what you wish to be done with it, I will do with it accordingly.

There is a line in your last volume which I can't read: the last line but one of the "flower in the crannied wall."

In the course of the same year he edited the _Conference of Pleasure_, written by Bacon for some masque or festive occasion, and printed from a MS. belonging to the Duke of Northumberland which had been slightly injured by fire. FitzGerald, in a letter to me, says of it:

Spedding's Introduction to his grilled Bacon, I call it really a beautiful little _Idyll_, the mechanical Job done so perfectly and so elegantly.

But while he was engaged in the great labour of his life he found time to write beautiful pieces of criticism on Shakespeare to which FitzGerald would willingly have had him devote his whole attention. "I never heard him read a page," he writes to Sir Frederick Pollock, "but he threw some new light upon it." In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for August 1850 he contributed a paper on "Who wrote Shakespeare's _Henry VIII._?" which he discussed with characteristic thoroughness. His conclusion was that it was the work of two authors, one of whom was Fletcher, and this was confirmed by the investigations of another enquirer, who independently arrived at substantially the same result. The division of the Acts in _Much Ado_, _Twelfth Night_, _Richard II._, and _King Lear_ formed the subject of other discussions, and these he considered his most valuable contribution to the restoration of Shakespeare. A criticism of Miss Kate Terry's acting in Viola gave him the opportunity of pointing out the corruptions by which the fine comedy, _Twelfth Night_, has been degraded into farce.

"Spedding says," FitzGerald writes in 1875 to f.a.n.n.y Kemble, "that Irving's Hamlet is simply--_hideous_--a strong expression for Spedding to use. But--(lest I should think his condemnation was only the Old Man's fault of depreciating all that is new) he extols Miss Ellen Terry's Portia as simply _a perfect Performance_: remembering (he says) all the while how fine was f.a.n.n.y Kemble's."

Again to the same correspondent early in 1880 he says:

By far the chief incident in my life for the last month has been the reading of dear old Spedding's Paper on the _Merchant of Venice_, there, at any rate, is one Question settled, and in such a beautiful way as only he commands. I could not help writing a few lines to tell him what I thought, but even very sincere praise is not the way to conciliate him. About Christmas I wrote him, relying on it that I should be most likely to secure an answer if I expressed dissent from some other work of his, and my expectation was justified by one of the fullest answers he had written to me for many a day and year.

The paper referred to was "The Story of the _Merchant of Venice_" in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for March 1880. In sending a copy to Frederick Tennyson he says:

I now post you a paper by old Spedding--a very beautiful one, I think; _settling_ one point, however unimportant, and in a graceful, as well as logical, way such as he is Master of.

A case has been got up--whether by Irving, the Stage Representative of Shylock, or by his Admirers--to prove the Jew to be a very amiable and ill-used man: insomuch that one is to come away from the theatre loving him and hating all the rest. He dresses himself up to look like the Saviour, Mrs. Kemble says. So old Jem disposes of _that_, besides unravelling Shakespeare's mechanism of the Novel he draws from, in a manner (as Jem says) more distinct to us than in his treatment of any other of his Plays "not professedly historical." And this latter point is, of course, far more interesting than the question of Irving and Co.,--which is a simple attempt, both of Actor and Writer, to strike out an original idea in the teeth of common-sense and Tradition.

And now came the end, unexpected and the result of an accident, which he maintained was entirely his own fault. In writing to tell me of the fatal result, one of his dearest friends said:

I grieve to tell you that all is over with our dear old friend.... He intended to cross before two carriages--crossed before one--found there was not time to pa.s.s before the other, and instead of pausing stepped back under the hansom which he had not seen, and which had not time to alter its course. He spent more strength in exculpating the poor driver than on any personal matter during his illness as soon as he regained memory of the circ.u.mstances.

"Mowbray Donne," says FitzGerald, when all was over, "wrote me that Laurence had been there four or five days ago, when Spedding said, that had the Cab done but a little more, it would have been a good Quietus. Socrates to the last."

And in another letter:

Tennyson called at the Hospital, but was not allowed to see him, though Hallam did, I think. Some one calling afterwards, Spedding took the doctor's arm, and asked, "Was it Mr. Tennyson?" Doctors and nurses all devoted to the patient man.

To f.a.n.n.y Kemble he writes:

It was very, very good and kind of you to write to me about Spedding.

Yes: Aldis Wright had apprised me of the matter just after it happened--he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days after the accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even cheerful; only anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting for some communication which S. had promised him! Whether to live, or to die, he will be Socrates still.

Directly that I heard from Wright I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me just a Post Card--daily, if he or his wife could, with but one or two words on it--"Better," "Less well," or whatever it might be. This morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be expected, according to Miss Spedding. But I suppose the Crisis, which you tell me of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that French Adage--"_Monsieur se porte mal--Monsieur se porte mieux--Monsieur est--_" Ah, you know, or you guess, the rest.

My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years and more--and probably should never see him again--but he lives--his old Self--in my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but embellish the recollection of him--if it could be embellished--for he is but the same that he was from a Boy--all that is best in Heart and Head--a man that would be incredible had one not known him.

Again he writes of him to Professor Norton:

He was the wisest man I have known; a great sense of Humour, a Socrates in Life and in Death, which he faced with all Serenity so long as Consciousness lasted. I suppose something of him will reach America, I mean, of his Death; run over by a Cab and dying in St.

George's Hospital to which he was taken, and from which he could not be removed home alive.

"I did not know," he says in another letter, "that I should feel Spedding's Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years [since] meeting him. But I knew that I could always get the Word I wanted of him by Letter, and also that from time to time I should meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in some Quarter or other. He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his Mind wandered. I wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost something, as one does in a Dream; and truly enough, I have lost _him_. 'Matthew is in his Grave, etc.'"

In apologizing to f.a.n.n.y Kemble for not writing to her as usual, he says:

I have let the Full Moon pa.s.s because you had written to me so lately, and so kindly, about our lost Spedding, that I could not call on you too soon again. Of him I will say nothing except that his Death has made me recall very many pa.s.sages in his Life in which I was partly concerned. In particular, staying at his c.u.mberland Home along with Tennyson in the May of 1835.... His Father and Mother were both alive--he a wise man, who mounted his Cob after Breakfast, and was at his Farm till Dinner at two--then away again till Tea: after which he sat reading by a shaded lamp: saying very little, but always courteous and quite content with any company his Son might bring to the house, so long as they let him go his way: which indeed he would have gone whether they let him or no. But he had seen enough of Poets not to like them or their Trade: Sh.e.l.ley for a time living among the Lakes: Coleridge at Southey's (whom perhaps he had a respect for--Southey, I mean); and Wordsworth, whom I do not think he valued. He was rather jealous of "Jem," who might have done available service in the world, he thought, giving himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with Tennyson conning over the "Morte d'Arthur," "Lord of Burleigh," and other things which helped to make up the two Volumes of 1842. So I always a.s.sociate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Miss Bristowe, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy, if you know of such a Person in _Nickleby_.

We will conclude with what his old friend, Sir Henry Taylor, wrote of him after his death:

As he will not read what I write I may allow myself to say something more. He was always master of himself and of his emotions; but underlying a somewhat melancholy composure and aspect there were depths of tenderness known only to those who knew his whole nature and his inward life, and it is well for those by whom he is mourned if they can find what he has described in a letter to be his great consolation in all his experiences of the death of those he loved (experiences which had begun early and had not been few), "that the past is sacred and sanctified; nothing can happen hereafter to disturb or obliterate it; nor need the recollection have any bitterness if a man does not, out of a false and morbid sentiment, make it so for himself."

And he adds:

To me there are no companions more welcome, cordial, consolatory or cheerful than my dead friends.

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARTHUR HALLAM READING "WALTER SCOTT" ALOUD ON BOARD THE "LEEDS," BOUND FROM BORDEAUX TO DUBLIN, SEPT. 9, 1830.

After Tennyson's and Hallam's memorable journey to the Pyrenees in aid of the revolutionary movement against King Ferdinand of Spain, vividly described by Carlyle in his _Life of John Sterling_.

Alfred Tennyson (in profile), John Harden and Mrs. Harden (on the left), and the Miss Hardens.]

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

By DR. JOHN BROWN

[The following article, containing the Memoir of Arthur Hallam by his father, Henry Hallam, is reprinted from _Horae Subsecivae_.--ED.]

PRAESENS imperfectum,--perfectum, plusquam perfectum FUTURUM.--GROTIUS.

The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep Into my study of imagination; And every lovely organ of thy life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit-- More moving delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of my soul, Than when thou livedst indeed.

_Much Ado about Nothing._

In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersets.h.i.+re, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic,--and the friend to whom "In Memoriam" is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with its humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where "the stately s.h.i.+ps go on," was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind when the poem, "Break, break, break," which contains the burden of that volume in which are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry, philosophy, and G.o.dliness, rose into his "study of imagination"--"into the eye and prospect of his soul."[110]

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately s.h.i.+ps go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all "In Memoriam," as a stream flows out of its spring-all is here. "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,"--"the touch of the vanished hand--the sound of the voice that is still,"--the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death: