Tennyson and His Friends Part 49

Hands all round! G.o.d the traitor's hope confound!

To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England round and round.

To all our statesmen so they be True leaders of the land's desire!

To both our Houses, may they see Beyond the borough and the s.h.i.+re!

We sail'd wherever s.h.i.+p could sail, We founded many a mighty state; Pray G.o.d our greatness may not fail Thro' craven fears of being great.

Hands all round! G.o.d the traitor's hope confound!

To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England round and round.

APPENDIX C

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS FROM UNKNOWN FRIENDS

[During the last twenty-five years of his life my father was probably, throughout the whole English-speaking race, the Englishman who was most widely known. Hence the letters addressed to him by strangers competed in number with those which, it is well known, add a needless weariness to the heavy task of governing a civilized state. This became a correspondence mainly of request or of reverence, although the voice of disappointment or of envy of what is ranked above oneself which lurks in common human nature may have occasionally been audible. My father's experience here was that of Dr. Johnson and, doubtless, of many more men of commanding eminence; that of writers submitting their work for candid criticism, charging him with conceit if he suggested publication as unadvisable; if it were advised, and the book failed, with deception. Probably many of those who wrote thus soon repented of their eloquence; at any rate nothing of this nature will be here preserved. But of the ordinary type of strangers'

letters some specimens may be of interest. And although these few have been chosen mainly from the letters addressed to my father during his last fifteen years yet they will give a general impression of the vast quant.i.ty received.

I place first letters upon poetry submitted (or proposed for submission) to my father's judgment.]

(1884)

I hope you will forgive the liberty I am taking in writing to you. I have heard a great deal about you, and I read a part of one of your poems, "The May Queen." I have not had an opportunity to read the whole of it, but I like what I have seen very much.... I have tried to write some poems myself. I have enclosed one for you to see, which came into my mind while I was digging a ditch in my garden. I am only nine years old, and if I keep on trying some day I shall write a grand poem.

(1882)

HONOURED SIR--It has been said: where a great apology is most needed, it is best to begin with the business at once.

I never had the pleasure of seeing you, but it is enough for me to have had the pleasure of reading your heart in your works, "though they be but a part of your inward soul." I am a lad scarcely seventeen summers old. In some of my leisure hours, particularly morning and evening ones, I penned a few thousand lines of small poems in fair metre,--so my simple-minded friend or two p.r.o.nounce them in their partiality.... [He deprecates the suspicion that he is applying for money.] Will you allow me to forward to you through the post a few of my poems? And when your benevolent soul has given up time to read some of my verses ("the primrose fancies of a boy"), and should my productions be considered by you deserving of your good word, half the difficulty of finding a willing publisher will, I know, be removed.

There is something truly felt and pathetic in the two following letters.

The first is from a young poetess.

I hardly know how I have summoned up sufficient courage to address you, although I have long wished to do so! Studying that most touching of poems "Enoch Arden," I felt somehow convinced that the heart that had inspired so much which is beautiful and touching, would also prompt a kind answer to me. Ever since I was a child (not so very long ago), writing was my only consolation and solace in moments of great grief or joy; writing--I shall not say _poetry_ but rhyme.

(1881)

DEAR MR. TENNYSON--I have heard and believed that great men are always the best hearted, and therefore hope you will kindly look at the enclosed and tell me if there is any hope that I may ever write anything worthy the name of poetry, and if those lines are anything but doggerel, I hope you will not think me as presumptuous as I do; something tells me you will be kind.

Now follow good average specimens.

(1890)

DEAR AND MUCH-ADMIRED LORD TENNYSON--The writer of this, an humble admirer of your Poetry,--an uneducated girl from the bogs of Ireland, has the audacity to send you her first effort in verse: whether it is poetry or not I leave you to decide, as I am entirely incapable of judging myself, as I am wholly ignorant of the art of versification, and indeed would never dream of attempting to write verse, only I was very anxious to succeed in prose writing....

(1882)

Will you kindly pardon my venturing to ask you to read some of my verses, and to tell me whether you consider me capable of ever writing poetry fit to be read? I have never had any desire to become a poet, but lately ideas have come into my head, once I seemed to see a line or two before my eyes, and in order to free myself from these fancies I wrote.

(1884)

DEAR SIR--I remember your figure and attire at s.h.i.+plake Vicarage in Mrs. Franklyn Rawnsley's house, 1852, thirty-two years ago. Does your memory travel back to a fine December morning when, the house full of guests for the christening of the latest blossom of the Rawnsley house, there drove up through the flooded meadows surrounding the low old vicarage, a cab with a young foreigner, a child of sixteen summers, all tremulous how she should be received, not speaking a word of English but her native German tongue, besides French, introduced by Miss Amelie Bodte, the auth.o.r.ess in Dresden, to teach music to Mrs.

Rawnsley's children? What a woeful feeling for the well-known counsellor's daughter to be treated in a cool way as the engaged teacher of little children. However, there was an oasis in the desert.

On the following morning Mrs. Rawnsley proposed to the a.s.sembled guests to take a walk in a neighbouring Squire's park while she looked after some home duties, and a tall young gentleman with an enormous Tyrolese hat offered to walk with a solitary stranger. He spoke a little German and tried to divert the gloom of the young girl by crossing the lawn and breaking a belated rose she admired coming from snow-bound Saxony. They stopped at a turtle-dove house where he made the prettiest little German pun she never forgot hereafter, "Ich bin eine kleine Taube" (I am a little dove (deaf)?). And it began to rain, and he--it was you--took off the Spanish cloak gathered with narrow st.i.tches on the throat, a black velvet collar falling over it, and wrapped it round the girl's shoulders. The ladies of the company frowned, returning home, all told as with one voice to Mrs. Rawnsley what had happened during the walk, and she laughed and said to me in French, "My dear, you had all the honours as a German because you did not try for them, this is the Poet Laureate, and it displeases him that the ladies torment him for attentions." And now do you remember, of course you know this girl was I. And the next day you read the "Ode to the Queen," of which I did not understand a word, and you went away to the sea to meet your wife and baby son, and I never saw you again.

Now after thirty-two years undergoing purification in the crucible of humble life, I come to ask you to accept kindly the dedication of one of my compositions--a song. Your name is as ill.u.s.trious here as in England, and my poor song will find more eager listeners with your name attached as a patron than otherwise.... "A turtle dove" could but bring an olive branch to a lone woman and gladden the heart of your Lords.h.i.+p's most respectful admirer,

MARIA * * *

(1890)

Now a Transatlantic poetess:

(After excuse asked for "presumption" she says:)

I have to thank you for some of the best thoughts and the purest pleasure I have ever derived from anything.

I am an American girl nineteen years of age, and was named from the hero of "Aylmer's Field."

I enclose some verses I have written. I would like exceedingly to hear your opinion of them and to know if they contain anything of promise.

LEOLINE * * *

(1877)

From America also we have one who modestly describes himself as "a mere Collegian, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown...."

I have during the past summer been engaged, to my great entertainment and instruction, in the perusal of your poetical works, reading many for the first time though of course familiar with a large number; having finished them, I could not refrain from expressing my admiration of your great genius in a few lines which I send herewith.

O Tennyson, how great a soul is thine!

Thy range of thought how varied and how vast...

(1862)

Will you accept the enclosed lines as a slight testimonial of the high admiration entertained for your exquisite genius, by a rhyming daughter of Columbia; whose poetic wings just fledging from a first unpublished vol. (commended by Wm. Cullen Bryant and Geo. Bancroft, Esqrs.) permit only a feeble fluttering around the base of that "Parna.s.sus," whose summit you have so brilliantly, and justly attained. * * *

(187-)

Then an "Agent for Stars" offers my father 20,000 if said Agent is permitted to arrange a tour for him in the United States.

(1884)

The following is another--we will not say, a less acceptable offering:

I send you by my good friend ---- a dozen small parcels of smoking tobacco....

We think it the best smoking tobacco in the world and I trust that you may find reason to agree with us. If it shall give you one moment's pleasure in return for the countless hours of delight that you have given me, I shall count myself a happy mortal.

(1890)