Reading them, I took heart."
On another occasion he says: "In the intervals of visitation on that day my thoughts were with dear friends who have passed from us; among whom, I need not say, was thy dearest friend. How vividly the beautiful mornings with you were recalled! Then I wondered at my age, and if it was possible that I was the little boy on the old Haverhill farm, unknown, and knowing nobody beyond my home horizon. I could not quite make the connection of the white-haired man with the black- locked boy. I could not help a feeling of loneliness, thinking of having outlived many of my life-companions; but I was still grateful to God that I had not outlived my love for them and for those still living. Among the many tokens of good will from all parts of the country and beyond the sea, there were some curious and amazing missives. One Southern woman took the occasion to include me in her curse of the 'mean, hateful Yankees.' To offset this, I had a telegram from the Southern Forestry Congress assembled in Florida, signed by president and secretary, informing me that 'In remembrance of your birthday, we have planted a live-oak tree to your memory, which, like the leaves of the tree, will be forever green.'"
Birthdays, on the whole, in the face of much sadness, brought him also much that was agreeable and delightful in remembrance. One old friend always gave him great pleasure by sending a huge basket of gilded wicker, in which were placed fruits of every variety from all quarters of the globe, and covered with rare flowers and ferns. In this way he visited the gardens of the Orient, and could see in his imagination the valleys of Napa and of Shiraz. On the occasion of a dinner given him at the Brunswick Hotel, on his seventieth birthday, he wrote: "I missed my friend. In the midst of so much congratulation, I do not forget his earlier appreciation and encouragement, and every kind word which assured and cheered me when the great public failed to recognize me. I dare not tell thee, for fear of seeming to exaggerate, how much his words have been to me."
Thus the long years and the long days passed on with scarcely perceptible diminution of interest in the affairs of this world. "I am sorry to find that the hard winter has destroyed some handsome spruces I planted eight years ago," he wrote one May day; "they had grown to be fine trees. Though rather late for me, I shall plant others in their places; for I remember the advice of the old Laird of Dumbiedikes to his son Jock: 'When ye hae naething better to do, ye can be aye sticking in a tree; it'll aye be growin' when ye are sleeping.' There is an ash-tree growing here that my mother planted with her own hands at threescore and ten. What agnostic folly to think that tree has outlived her who planted it!"
The lines of Whittier's life stretched "between heaven and home" during the long period of eighty-four years. A host of friends, friends of the spirit, were, as we have seen, forever clustering around him; and what a glorious company it was! Follen, Shipley, Chalkley, Lucy Hooper, Joseph Sturge, Channing, Lydia Maria Child, his sister Elizabeth—a shining cloud too numerous to mention; the inciters of his poems and the companions of his fireside. In the silence of his country home their memories clustered about him and filled his heart with joy.
"He loved the good and wise, but foundHis human heart to all akin
Who met him on the common groundOf suffering and of sin."
His "Home Ballads" grew out of this very power of clinging to the sameplaces and the old loves, and what an incomparable group they make!"Telling the Bees," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "My Playmate," "In SchoolDays," are sufficient in themselves to set the seal to his great fame.
As a traveler, too, he is unrivaled, giving us, without leaving his own garden, the fine fruit of foreign lands. In reading his poems of the East, it is difficult to believe that he never saw Palestine, nor Ceylon, nor India; and the wonder is no less when he writes of our own wide country. Indeed, the vividness of his poems about the slaves at St. Helena's Island and elsewhere make them among the finest of all his local poems. One called "The Pass of the Sierra" may easily bear the palm among much descriptive writing.
He watched over his last remaining brother during a long illness and death, during the autumn and winter of 1882 and 1883 in Boston. The family all left Oak Knoll and came to be with him at a hotel, whence he could make frequent visits to his brother's bedside; but the unwonted experience of passing several months in town, and the wearing mission which brought him there, told seriously upon his health, and caused well-grounded anxiety as to the result. The day after the last services had been performed he wrote to a friend: "Indeed, it was a great comfort to sit beside you and to feel that if another beloved one had passed into the new life beyond sight and hearing, the warm hearts of loved friends were beating close to my own. You do not know how grateful it was to me. Dr. Clarke's presence and words were full of comfort. My brother did not approve of a display of flowers, but he loved violets, and your simple flowers were laid in his hand…. Give my love to S., and kiss the dear child for me."
It was not, however, until 1890 that we could really feel he had left the years of active service and of intellectual achievement as things of the past. He was shut out from much that gave him pleasure, but the spirit which animated the still breathing frame, though waiting and at times longing for larger opportunity, seemed to us like a loving sentinel, covering his dear ones as with a shield, and watching over the needs of humanity. The advance of the colored people, the claims of the Indians and their wrongs, opportunities for women, statesmen, and politicians, the private joys and sorrows of those dear to him, were all present and kept alive, though in the silence of his breast.
The end came, the door opened, while he was staying with the daughter of an old friend at Hampton Falls, in New Hampshire—that saintly woman whom we associate with one of the most spiritual and beautiful of his poems, "A Friend's Burial." After a serious illness in the winter of 1892 he was almost too frail for any summer journeying; but with his usual wisdom and instinctive turning of the heart towards old familiar places, he thought of this hospitable house where he seemed to gain strength, and where he found much happiness and the quietness that he loved. His last illness was brief; he was ministered to by those who stood nearest him. And thus the waves of time passed over him and swept him from our sight.
It is a pleasure now to recall many a beautiful scene in summer afternoons, under the trees at Danvers, when his spirit animated the air and made the landscape shine with a radiance not its own. Such memories serve to keep the whole world beautiful wherein he moved, and add to his poetry a sense of presence and a living light.
Old age appears in comparison to every other stage of human existence as a most undesirable state. We look upon its approaches and its ravages with alarm. Death itself is far less dreadful, and "the low door," if it will only open quickly, brings little fear to the thoughtful mind. But the mystery of decadence, the long sunsetting, the loss of power—what do they mean? The Latin wordsaga, from which the French getla sagesse, and we "the sage," gives us a hint of what we do not always understand—the spiritual beauty and the significance even of loss in age.
Whittier, wearing his silver crown, brought the antique word into use again, and filled it with fresh meaning for modern men.
It is difficult at the present time, when Tennyson's poetry has become a part of the air we breathe, to look back into the world of literature as it existed before he came.
There is a keen remembrance, lingering ineradicably with the writer, of a little girl coming to school once upon recitation day, with a "piece" of her own selection safely stored away in her childish memory. It was a new poem to the school, and when her turn came to recite her soul was full of the gleam and glory of Camelot. She felt as if she were unlocking a treasure-house, and it was with unspeakable pleasure to herself that she gave, verse after verse, the entire poem of "The Lady of Shalott." Doubtless the child's voice drifted away into sing-song, as her whole little self seemed to drift away into the land of faery, and doubtless also the busy teacher, who was more familiar with Jane Taylor and Cowper, was sadly puzzled. When the child at length sat down, scarcely knowing where she was in her sudden descent from the land of marvel, she heard the teacher say, to her amazement and discouragement, after an ominous pause, "I wonder if any young lady can tell me what this poem means?" There was no reply.
"Canyoutell us?" was the next question, pointed at the poor little girl who had just dropped out of cloudland. "I thought it explained itself," was the plaintive reply. With a slight air of depreciation, in another moment the next recitation was called for, and the dull clouds of routine shut down over the sudden glory. "Shades of the prison-house" then and there began to close over the growing child. One joy had for the present faded from her life, that of a sure sympathy and understanding. Not even her teacher could see what she saw, nor could feel what lay deep down in her own glowing heart. Nevertheless Tennyson was henceforth a seer and a prophet to this child and to the growing world; but for some, who could never learn his language, he was born too late.
The picturesqueness of Scott and Byron, the simple piety of Cowper, had satisfied the poetic and religious nature of the world up to that time. Shelley and Keats had indeed lived, but men had scarcely then learned generally to read them. Tennyson may be looked upon as their interpreter, in a measure, to the common world. Even Wordsworth, the mountain-top of poetry, the leader, whom Tennyson called his master— even he failed to give the common mind, which looks for drama, any long poem which he who runs may read. This humanity in poetry is distinctly, first of all, Shakespearian; but if this quality should seem to any reader not also Tennysonian, let him re-read "Guinevere," in the "Idylls of the King," and reverse his decision.
The hearts of men were largely attuned by Tennyson, and taught to understand the affinities and symbolisms of nature. This new era in literature opened about the year 1830, when Tennyson gave a few poems to the world, which were chiefly canceled by his later judgment. A small book in green paper covers lies before me as I write, "privately printed" in 1862, containing his poems printed between 1830 and 1833, and giving the first readings of some which have been sanctioned in his later editions. The volume "privately printed" has been most privately treasured lest anything should appear from it to "vex the poet's mind." For thirty years it has lain in a secret drawer, with these words inscribed upon the cover: "Not to be lent; not to be stolen; not to be given away."
Some of these poems have been wrought over until we are reminded of his own line,
"Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,"
and incorporated in his later editions; others seem to have been gathered up and published without permission by an American publisher, who in some way gained possession of the book. The present perfected edition, however, published by Macmillan, evidently contains all the poems Tennyson wished to have remembered. The chief interest in the small green book is in the early readings, which are a good study for those who pursue the art of poetry. We see in them the sure integrity of the master-hand.
"Isabel" was not, perhaps, one of the very earliest poems, although it stands among the early poems of character in the perfected edition. It does not appear in the green book, yet the title already stands in the table of contents. In his own revised editions it has always appeared unchanged from the first. There is a flawless loveliness in this poem which makes it especially worthy of admiration. "Isabel" possesses a peculiar interest, because it is understood to be the poet's tribute to his wife, and indeed even his imaginative eye could hardly elsewhere have found another to whom this description would so properly fit:—
"The intuitive decision of a brightAnd thorough-edged intellect to partError from crime; a prudence to withholdThe laws of marriage character'd in goldUpon the blanched tablets of her heart;A love still burning upward, giving lightTo read those laws; an accent very lowIn blandishment, but a most silver flowOf subtle-paced counsel in distress,Right to the heart and brain, tho' undescried,Winning its way with extreme gentlenessThro' all the outworks of suspicious prideA courage to endure and to obey;A hate of gossip parlance and of sway,—Crown'd Isabel, thro' all her placid life,The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife."
The relation of Tennyson's life to that of other men has been but imperfectly understood. There was indeed a natural sublimity in his character which gave him, as he has himself said of the poet's mind, a power for scorn of things fit to be scorned; but his capacity for friendship has been proved again and again. The tree, as of old, is known by its fruits, and we need only recall the poems to James Spedding, to F. D. Maurice, to Mary Boyle, to Lord Dufferin, his correspondence with Edward Fitzgerald, and the great note of grief and consolation in "In Memoriam," to know a man capable of friendship, and one who has drawn to himself the noble lovers of his time.
There was an unconsciousness of outward things, of the furniture of life, which left him freer than most men to face the individual soul that approached him. There was also a fine consistency in his personality,—no tampering with the world; no trying to serve two masters. The greatness of his presence was felt, we believe, by all who approached him; he seemed to be invested by a strange remoteness from the affairs of the world. Yet it was easy for the spirits to draw near to him who really wanted what he could give. His hospitality was large and sincere. In his own words of the "Great Duke" we read his perfect likeness:—
"As the greatest only are,In his simplicity sublime."
A friend who knew him wrote once: "Tennyson found out in the golden season of his life, his youth, just what kind of work he was fitted to do, and he never squandered an hour in search of his primary bearings…. There is always a gravity about him, a becoming nobleness, which reminds one of what St. Simon said of Fénélon, 'When he is present it requires an effort to cease looking at him.'"
When this friend returned after his first interview with Tennyson, many years ago, we can well recall the eagerness with which we listened. His excitement as he described the hours they had passed together was hardly less than that of his hearer. Every minute detail of the interview was impatiently demanded. "How did he look?" was asked immediately in the first pause, and "What did he say?" followed before there was quite time to speak. In reply came a full description of the tall figure, clad in a long gray dressing-gown, presenting itself in the half-opened doorway of his chambers in the Temple, and looking cautiously out at the new comer.
"'Oh! it is you,' he said, drawing his visitor in through the narrow space with a most cordial welcome. He was sitting before the fire, with his books about him, which he put aside, and while he talked he began to toast sundry slices of bread for our repast. As for his looks, his head is a very grand one, and his voice has a deep swelling richness in it. He had just received from the printers some proof sheets of the 'Idylls of the King,' and then and there he chanted the story of Enid and Elaine: chanted is the true word to apply to his recitations. He had a theory that poetry should always be given out with the rhythm accentuated, and the music of the verse strongly emphasized, and he did it with a power that was marvelous."
The next recollection, and one that sweeps vividly across my memory, is that of going to Farringford for the first time, and seeing Tennyson among the surroundings so admirably suited to his tastes and necessities. The place was much more retired than at present; indeed, there was neither sight nor sound of any intrusion during those summer days. The island might have been Prospero's own, it seemed so still and far away.
Beyond the gardens and the lawn the great downs sloped to the sea, and in the distance on either hand could be seen the cliffs and shores as they wound away and were lost in the dim haze that lay between us and the horizon. We found ourselves suddenly walking as in a dream, surrounded with the scenery of his poems.
It is still easy to distinguish with perfect clearness to the "inward eye" two figures rambling along the downs that lovely day, and pausing at a rude summer-house, a kind of forgotten shelter, a relic of some other life. The great world was still as only the noon of summer knows how to be; the air blew freshly up from the sea, and the figures stopped a moment to look and rest. The door of the shelter hung idly on rusted hinges, and the two entered to enjoy the shade. Turning, they saw the whole delicious scene framed in the rude doorway. "Ah," the lady said, "I have found one of your haunts. I think you must sometimes write here." Tennyson looked at her with a smile which said, "I can trust my friends;" and putting his hand up high over the door, he took from the tiny ledge a bit of pencil and paper secreted there, held them out to her for one moment, and then carefully put them back again. There was not much said, but it was an immediate revelation, and a cherished bit of confidence. Perhaps on that sheet was already inscribed,
"Ask me no more; the moon may draw the sea,The cloud may stoop from heaven and lake the shape,With fold on fold, of mountain or of cape;"
or perhaps the page was waiting for "The Sailor-Boy," or glimpses of the great "Tyntagel," or "Lyonesse."
I could not know, nor did he, what he was yet to do. I only felt—all who knew him felt—that he knew his work demanded from him the sacrifice of what the world calls pleasure. He endeavored to hold his spirit ready, and his mind trained and responsive.
His constant preoccupation with the business of his life rendered him often impatient of wasting hours in mere "personal talk." He was always eager and ready to hear of large matters of church or state from those who were competent to inform him; but it was his chief joy, when his friends were gathered about him, to read from other poets or from his own books.
In this same visit there was much talk of Milton, of whom he spoke as "the great organist of verse, who always married sound to sense when he wrote." Surely no one ever gave the lines of that great poet as he did. It was wonderful to hear. It would be impossible to forget that grand voice as he repeated:—
"The imperial ensign which full high advancedShone like a meteor streaming to the wind,With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,Seraphic arms and trophies; all the whileSonorous metal blowing martial sounds."
Tennyson's chanting of his own "Boädicea" was very remarkable.
"Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to becelebrated,Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable."
But nothing could excel the effect of his rendering of "Guinevere," his voice at times tremulous with emotion, and his face turned from the light as he read,
"Let no man dream but that I love thee still,"
and all the noble context glowing with a white heat. It was easy then to find that his own ideal,
"Flos regum Arthuris,"
was not a legend to him alone, but a vision of the Holy Grail toward which he aspired.
It were easy, indeed it is a temptation, to record every detail, stamped as they all are on the memory after several visits at Farringford and at Aldworth; but the beautiful paper printed only a few years ago by Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie, now given to the world in a volume, where Tennyson stands as one of "The Light-Bearers," would make any repetition of the history of his family life worse than unnecessary. Mrs. Ritchie's friendship with the members of that household, and her familiarity with the houses and scenery which surrounded them, have given her the opportunity to do what her genius has executed.
Summer was again here, with a touch of autumn in the air—this autumn in which we write—when we last saw Lord Tennyson at Aldworth. He was already unwell and suffering from a cold. He sat, however, on his couch, which was drawn across the great window, where he could look off, when he turned his head, and see the broad green valley and the hills beyond, or, near at hand, could watch the terrace and his own trees, and catch a glimpse of the garden.
The great frame had lost its look of giant strength; the hands were thinner; but the habit of his mind and spirit was the same. Again we heard the voice; again we felt the uplift of his presence. He was aware that he was not to stay here much longer, and when we bent over him to say good-by, we knew and he knew it was indeed "farewell." He was surrounded with deep love and tenderness and the delightful presence of his little grandchildren, and when, shortly after, his weakness increased, he doubtless heard the words sounding in his mind:—
"Fear no more the heat o' the sun,Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages."
He asked for "Cymbeline" that he might carry the noble lines clearly in remembrance. Later the moon shone full into the room, and in that dim splendor, and to the music of the autumn wind, his spirit passed.
When I first saw Lady Tennyson she was in the prime of life. Her two sons, boys of eight and ten years of age perhaps, were by her side. Farringford was at that time almost the same beautiful solitude the lovers had found it years before, when it was first their home. Occasionally a curious sight-seer, or a poet-worshiper, had been known to stray across the grounds or to climb a tree in order to view the green retired spot; but as a rule Tennyson could still wander unwatched and unseen through the garden, over the downs, and stand alone on the shore of the great sea.
It was already afternoon when we arrived dusty and travel-stained at the hospitable door, which was wide open, shaded by vines, showing the interior dark and cool. Mrs. Tennyson, in her habitual and simple costume of a long gray dress and lace kerchief over her head, met us with her true and customary cordiality, leading us to the low drawing- room, where a large oriel window opening on the lawn and the half- life-size statue of Wordsworth were the two points which caught my attention as we entered. Her step as she preceded us was long and free. Something in her bearing and trailing dress, perhaps, gave her a mediaeval aspect which suited with the house. The latter, I have been told, was formerly a baronial holding, and the fair Enid and the young Elaine appeared to be at one with her own childhood. They were no longer centuries apart from the slender fair-haired lady who now lay on a couch by our side,—they were a portion of her own existence, of a nature obedient to tradition, obedient to home, obedient to love. The world has made large advance, and the sound of the wheels of progress were not unheard in the lady's room at Farringford. She was ready to sympathize with every form of emancipation; but for herself, her poet's life was her life, and his necessity was her great opportunity.
I recall Mrs. Browning once saying to me, "Ah, Tennyson is too much indulged. His wife is too much his second self; she does not criticise enough." But Tennyson was not a second Browning. The delicate framework of his imagination, filled in by elemental harmonies, was not to be carelessly touched. She understood his work and his nature, and he stood firm where he had early planted himself by her side in worshiping affection and devotion. "Alfred carried the sheets of his new poem up to London," she said one day, "and showed them to Mr. Monckton Milnes, who persuaded him to leave out one of the best lines; but I persuaded him to replace it when he came home. It is a mistake in general for him to listen to the suggestions of others about his poems."
All this was long ago, and the finger of memory has left faint tracings for me to follow; but I recall her figure at dinner as she sat in her soft white muslin dress, tied with blue, at that time hardly whiter than her face or bluer than her eyes, and how the boys stood sometimes one on either side of her in their black velvet dresses, like Millais' picture of the princes in the tower, and sometimes helped to serve the guests. By and by we adjourned to another room, where there was a fire and a shining dark table with fruit and wine after her own picturesque fashion, and where later the poet read to us, while she, being always delicate in health, took her accustomed couch. I remember the quaint apartment for the night, on different levels, and the faded tapestry,—recalling "the faded mantle and the faded veil," her tender personal care, and her friendly good- night, the silence, the sweetness, and the calm.
She sometimes joined our out-door expeditions, but could not walk with us. For years she used a wheeled chair, as Mrs. Ritchie has charmingly described in her truthful and sympathetic sketch of the life at Aldworth. I only associated her with the interior, where her influence was perfect.
The social atmosphere of Farringford, which depended upon its mistress, was warm and simple. A pleasant company of neighbors and friends was gathered when "Maud" was read aloud to us, a wide group, grateful and appreciative, and one to which he liked to read.
After this the mists of time close over! I can recall her again in the gray dress and kerchief following our footsteps to the door. I can see her graceful movement of the head as she waved her adieux; I can see the poet's dusky figure standing by her side, and that is all.
Sometimes she lives confusedly to the world of imagination as the Abbess at Almesbury; and sometimes, as one who knew her has said, she was like the first of the three queens, "the tallest of them all, and fairest," who bore away the body of Arthur. She was no less than these, being a living inspiration at the heart of the poet's every-day life.
It would seem to be upon another visit that we were talking in the drawing-room about Browning. "We should like to see him oftener," she said, "he is delightful company, but we cannot get him to come here; we are too quiet for him!"
I found food for thought in this little speech when I remembered the fatuous talk at dinner-tables where I had sometimes met Browning, and thought of Tennyson's great talk and the lofty serenity of his lady's presence.
My last interview with Lady Tennyson was scarcely two months before Tennyson's death. The great grief of their life in the loss of their son Lionel had fallen upon them meanwhile. They were then at Aldworth, which, although a house of their own building, was far more mediaeval in appearance than Farringford. She was alone, and still on the couch in the large drawing-room, and there she spoke with the same youth of heart, the same deep tenderness, the same simple affection which had never failed through years of intercourse. When she rose to say farewell and to follow me as far as possible, she stepped with the same spirited sweep I had first seen.
The happiness of welcoming her lovely face, which wore to those who knew her an indescribable heavenliness, is mine no more; but the memory cannot be effaced of one lady who held the traditions of high womanhood safe above the possible deteriorations of human existence.