To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers and truths, the progress of things as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions,the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described by the Apostle, “having no hope and without God in the world,” all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution.
To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers and truths, the progress of things as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions,the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described by the Apostle, “having no hope and without God in the world,” all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution.
Lord Tennyson takes in a wider range of considerations than the Cardinal. He paints graphically, not only the mystery of the lot of mankind, but the further sense of bewilderment which arises when we contemplate the aimlessness of this vast universe of which our earth is such an inappreciable fragment. Logically the poem asks only the question: “Great or small, grand or ignoble, what does anything matter if we are but creatures of the day with no eternal destiny?” But its grandeur consists in the manner in which it sweeps from end to end of human experience and knowledge, from thoughts overwhelming in their vastness, from ideas carrying the mind over the length and breadth of space and over visions of all eternity, to pictures of this planet, with its microscopic details, the hopes, anxieties, plans, pleasures, griefs which make up the immediate life of man. The imagination vacillates between a keen sense of the importance of all, even the smallest, and the worthlessness of all, even the greatest. At one moment comes the thought that one life out of the myriads of lives passed on this tiny planet, if it be lived and given up for righteousness, is of infinite and eternal value, and the next moment comes the sense that the whole universe is worthless and meaningless, if, indeed, the only percipient beings who are affected by it are but creatures who feel for a day and then pass to nothingness. Each picture of the various aspects of human life rouses an instinctive sympathy, and a feeling in the background, “it can’t be worthless and meaningless,” and yet the poet relentlessly forces us to confess that it is only some far wider view of human nature anddestiny than this world alone can justify, which can make the scenes he depicts of any value. What Mill called “the disastrous feeling of ‘not worth while’” threatens the reader at every turn; though the pictures of life in its innumerable aspects of happiness, misery, sensuality, purity, selfishness, self-devotion, ambition, aspiration, craft, cruelty, are so intensely real and rivet the imagination so strongly, that he refuses to yield to the feeling. I subjoin some of the couplets where good and bad, great and small, alternate:
Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face,Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish’d race.Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,—What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?············Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools;Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow’d up by her vassal legion of fools.············Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; honest Poverty, bare to the bone;Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty: Flattery gilding the rift in a throne.············Love for the maiden, crown’d with marriage, no regrets for aught that has been,Household happiness, gracious children, debtless competence, golden mean;National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy spites of the village spire;Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and vows that are snapt in a moment of fire;He that has lived for the lust of the minute, and died in the doing it, flesh without mind;He that has nail’d all flesh to the Cross, till Self died out in the love of his kind;Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolutions of earth;All new-old revolutions of Empire—change of the tide—what is all of it worth?What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer?All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair?What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse-coffins at last,Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown’d in the deeps of a meaningless Past?What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment’s anger of bees in their hive?
The thought which seems to oppress the seer is the insignificance of everything when compared to a standard—ever conceivable and ever actual—above it. The ruts of a ploughed field may seem to the diminutive insect as vast and overcoming as the Alps seem to us. Then contrast the thought of Mont Blanc with that of the whole globe; proceed from the globe to the solar system, and from that to the myriads of systems lost in space. All that is great to us is relatively great, and becomes small at once when the mind rises higher. So, too, in the moral order, all those aspects of human life which sway our deepest emotions are but “a murmur of gnats in the gloom,” if regard be had to our comparative insignificance. The ground yields at every step, and the mind looks for someterra firma, some absolute basis of trust, and this is only to be found in the conception of man as possessing an eternal destiny. The infinite value of all that concerns an immortal being stands proof against the thoughts that bewildered our vision. “He that has nailed all flesh to the cross till self died out in the love of his kind” may be but a speck in the universe, but faith measures him by a standard other than that of spacial vastness. The idea of theeternal worth of moralitysteps in to calm the imagination, and this idea in its measure justifies the conception of the value and importance of all the phases of human existence which make up the dramaof life. Human Love is the side of man’s nature which the poet looks to as conveying the sense of his immortal destiny. The undying union of spirit with spirit is a union which the grave cannot end. The bewildering nightmare of the nothingness and vanity of all things is abruptly cut short, as the sense of what is deepest in the human heart promptly gives the lie to what it cannot solve in detail:
Peace, let it be! for I loved him and love him for ever.The dead are not dead but alive.
The South Side of Entrance from below the Terrace, Aldworth.Drawn by W. Biscombe Gardner.
BySir James Knowles, K.C.V.O.
Farringford he never forsook, though he added another home to it; and assuredly no poet has ever before called two such residences his own. Both of them were sweetened by the presence there, so graciously prolonged, of her to whom the lovers of song owe so deep a debt of gratitude. The second home was as well chosen as the first. It lifted England’s great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by “the inviolate sea.” Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with men the most noted of their time; statesmen, warriors, men of letters, science, and art, some of royal race, some famous in far lands, but none more welcome to him than the friends of his youth. Nearly all of those were taken from him by degrees; but many of them stand successively recorded in his verse. The days which I passed there yearly with him and his were the happiest days of each year. They will retain a happy place in my memory during whatever short period my life may last; and the sea-murmurs of Freshwater will blend with the sighing of the woods around Aldworth, for me, as for many more worthy, a music, if mournful, yet full of consolation.MS. Note, Aubrey de Vere.
Farringford he never forsook, though he added another home to it; and assuredly no poet has ever before called two such residences his own. Both of them were sweetened by the presence there, so graciously prolonged, of her to whom the lovers of song owe so deep a debt of gratitude. The second home was as well chosen as the first. It lifted England’s great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by “the inviolate sea.” Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with men the most noted of their time; statesmen, warriors, men of letters, science, and art, some of royal race, some famous in far lands, but none more welcome to him than the friends of his youth. Nearly all of those were taken from him by degrees; but many of them stand successively recorded in his verse. The days which I passed there yearly with him and his were the happiest days of each year. They will retain a happy place in my memory during whatever short period my life may last; and the sea-murmurs of Freshwater will blend with the sighing of the woods around Aldworth, for me, as for many more worthy, a music, if mournful, yet full of consolation.
MS. Note, Aubrey de Vere.
When I was “little more than a boy” I made, accidentally, my first acquaintance with Tennyson as a poet, long before I knew him as a man. I came by chance upon a copy of “In Memoriam,” then just published anonymously. I was quite entirely ignorant and indifferent in those days about all poetry, and did not in the least know or guess who had written it, but, opening it haphazard at the Geological Stanzas, was so impressed and riveted by them,—for I was a student of Geology at the time,—that I could not put the book down until I had read it all through and from end to end. I was caught up and enthralled by its spirit, and my eyes seemed suddenly opened on a whole new world. It made an epoch in my life and an ineffaceable impression.I soon came to know my Tennyson almost by heart, and was taunted by my friends for my worship of the “divine Alfred,” as I reverently called him. In this frame of mind it was that I made the bold venture of asking his leave to dedicate to him my little book on King Arthur and his Knights, his kind acceptance of which homage I have already mentioned in my former article.[66]
My first personal acquaintance with him was in the autumn of 1866, when I was staying at Freshwater. I felt that I must call upon him and offer him my respects and thanks before I left, but put it off through shyness until the day before my holiday was to end. Then I took my courage in both hands and went to Farringford. “Mr. Tennyson was out walking, but Mrs. Tennyson was at home and would be happy to see me.” It was a disappointment, but Mrs. Tennyson received me most kindly and graciously, and begged me to return later in the evening if I could, and see her husband who would like to meet me. When I did return I was shown upstairs to the top of the house and into an attic which was the Poet’s own study, and presently, with my heart in my mouth, I heard his great steps as he climbed up the little wooden stairs. His bodily presence seemed as kingly as I felt it ought to be, though a little grim and awful at first; but he made me very welcome, and then groped about for and lighted a pipe, and sat down and began to speak of King Arthur as being a subject of common interest and sympathy.
This soon thawed the chill of my spirits and I began to feel more at home, until I felt I could make the request I was longing to do—would he read to me one of his Poems, as I desired earnestly to hear from his own lips what I already knew and loved? Then came a great surprise and delight, for it was not readingas usually understood, but intoning on a note, almost chanting, which I heard, and which brought the instant conviction that this was the proper vehicle for poetry as distinguished from prose. I was so enchanted that I begged for more and more; and then I suppose may have begun a personal sympathy which grew and lasted always afterwards till his death. For when I made to go he took me all about the house, showing me the pictures and drawings with which his walls were lined, peering into them so closely with a lighted candle that I thought he would set them or himself on fire. This was, perhaps, another common ground,—I having been all my life interested in art and in a small way a collector of drawings and pictures.
Before I left he told me to come and claim acquaintance if ever we met before I came to Farringford again, for if not his short sight would prevent his knowing me. On this friendly request I acted in the spring of the following year, 1867, when my wife and I were going to pay a visit at Haslemere. At Haslemere station, to my surprise, I saw him standing on the platform, and went up and spoke to him, reminding him of his desire that I should do so. I then introduced my wife to him, and he explained how he came to be there—namely, because he was in search of a site where he might build a cottage to take refuge in from the tourists who made his life a burden to him in the Isle of Wight. He added, “You are an architect, why should you not make the plans of it for me?” I said, “With the greatest possible pleasure, upon one condition that I may act professionally without making any professional charge; for I cannot be paid twice over, and you, Mr. Tennyson, have over-paid me already long ago—in the pleasure and delight your works have given me—for any little work I could do for you.” He protested, but in the end accepted my terms.
The cottage, as he first proposed it, was to be a small square, four-roomed house, with a door in the middle, like one in which he was then staying near Haslemere. I went there to see him and to describe plans and the question of a site. After inspecting several with him, he took me secretly to one which a friend had found out as being possibly procurable, and on which Aldworth was finally built. It was a natural terrace, formed just below the summit of Black Down, and was known as Green Hill. There was a potato-patch where the house now stands,—a little flat clearance in the midst of sloping coppices that covered all the southern side of the hill; and it was a spot of ideal seclusion, just wide enough and no more for a moderately sized house, quite perfect for his objects,—almost too perfect in the way of inaccessibility, for it took years of negotiation and trouble to obtain a practicable road to it. The view from it was simply perfect, extending over the whole of woody Sussex to the South Downs and the sea. “It wants nothing,” he said as he gazed at it, “but a great river looping along through the midst of it.” “Gloriously crimson flowers set along the edge of the terrace would burn like lamps against the purple distance”—as presently was realized.
The plans for a four-roomed cottage gave way somewhat as I talked the matter over with Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, the latter giving me certain rough ideas which she could not quite express by drawing, but which I understood enough to put into shape; and presently I went to Farringford with designs for a less unimportant dwelling. It grew and grew as it was talked over and considered, the details being all discussed with Mrs. Tennyson, while he contented himself by pretending to protest against any addition and improvement.
At last, one day, when I brought sketches for anarcaded porch to complete the design, he put his foot down and said he would have nothing to do with it—that he would have no more additions—that it would ruin him and could not be entertained for a moment. He walked to and fro, coming back from time to time to the table where the drawing lay and looking at it. He admitted that he liked it more and more the more he looked at it, but presently cried out with simulated fury, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and ran out of the room. Then I knew that the porch was won. When it was built he got to be very fond of it, and used to call attention to the way in which the landscape was framed by the arches of it. He even had a picture of it made by a friend to show this effect.
He laid the foundation-stone of it on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, 1868, few being there besides his great friend, Sir John Simeon, myself, and my wife, whom he dragged up the steep hillside in the blazing sunshine. He interfered very little about the progress of the work, except as to various little accidental things which moved his fancy. For instance, a stone shield in the gable of one of the dormer windows had remained blank when all the rest were carved—simply because of a hesitation how best to fill it up. But when the time came at which it must be finished, if done at all, he stood spying up at it through his eyeglass for a long while, and then decided to leave it blank,—so that the last touch to the work might be decided hereafter by Fate, accident having kept it open so long.
He was reminded by it of the blank shield in his own Idylls, of which Merlin asks, “Who shall blazon it?—when and how?” and adds, “Perchance when all our wars are done the brand Excalibur will be cast away.” In a similar way he would not let the figure of a stone Falcon be removed which had been set up as a modelfor approval at one corner of the parapet, but was never intended to stay there. He looked at it long and curiously, and laughed and said it seemed to grow queerer, that it was a pity to take it down; and there it remained ever after in its original solitariness, to his great content and amusement, which had a touch of seriousness in it.
He made a great point of his favourite motto,Gwyr yn erbyn y byd(“Truth against the world”), being prominently emblazoned in tile mosaic at the threshold of the front door and in the pavement of the Hall. The text, “Gloria Deo in Excelsis,” in the carved band which surrounds the house was the selection of Mrs. Tennyson. The formation of the terrace lawn in front of the house, with its boundary balustrade, interested him extremely; and when the vases were filled with splendid blossoms, standing out against the blue landscape, the vision he had foreseen from the potato-patch was realized to his full satisfaction. The invariable and tormenting delays in finishing the house, however, annoyed him greatly; for he longed to get into it away from the tourists, and used to say he should never live to enjoy it long enough. When he did move in, he said he wanted to have each room for his own, and at first adopted for sleeping in, the central top attic on the south front, which opened on to the lead flat of the large bay window on the first floor. He called it his balcony-room, and loved to stand out on the flat and watch the changes in the great prospect spread out before him. He ultimately gave this up for a guest’s room, and took to the finer room below, which was always flooded with light, and was filled with bright moonshine when he died in it. On one occasion, when I was sleeping in the balcony-room, I was suddenly waked up by a thundering at the door and his great voice calling out, “Get up and look out of the window.” I jumped out of bed accordingly, and saw the whole wide aspectturned into a flat white billowy ocean, with no trace of land at all, but with waves beginning to move and roll in it. The sun was just rising, and I stood to watch the gradual creation of a world as it were. From moment to moment the vast ocean broke up and rose away into clouds, uncovering the landscape bit by bit—the hills first and the valleys last, until the whole great prospect came together again into its normal picture. It was delightful to see his enjoyment of everything in the new house, from the hot-water bathroom downwards, for at first the hot bath seemed to attract him out of measure. He would take it four or five times a day, and told me he thought it the height of luxury “to sit in a hot bath and read about little birds.”
The following notes of a visit paid to him at Aldworth show the usual manner of his daily life there.
He usually dined rather early, at 7 or 7.30 o’clock, and Mrs. Tennyson would generally carve (or in later times Hallam), according to the old-fashioned custom. He talked freely, with an abundance of anecdote and story, and full of humour, and “chaff” (no touch of pedantry or priggism could live in his presence); and always when at home made a move for dessert to another room—the morning room at Aldworth—where he would begin his bottle (pint) of port, and with the exception of a glass or so, would finish it, talking all the time with entire geniality and abandon, and full of reminiscences of men and things. Sometimes he would recur to his grievances at the hands of his publishers, and pour out his complaints about them, until finally landed, to his entire satisfaction, with Macmillan.
After dessert he would retire to his study and his after-dinner pipe, which he took quite by himself; and would then come into the drawing-room, whither the others had repaired some time, and join in general talk again and perhaps read, at some one’s request, some ofhis own poems, till the ladies left for bed.[67]Then he would invite some favoured guest or guests to his study, and begin the confidential discussions and soliloquies which it was a priceless privilege—the most valued and treasured of privileges—to share and to listen to. At such times all his inmost thoughts and feelings, recollections and speculations of his life came out with the open simplicity of a child and the keen insight and far sight of a prophet; and one had glimpses into the mystery of things beyond one’s own power of seeing, and as if seen through a telescope.
I have before stated how he more than once summed up his personal religion in the words: “There’s a Something That watches over us, and our Individuality endures.” On one occasion he added, “I do not say endures for ever, but I say endures after this life at any rate.[68]” When in answer to the question, What was his deepest desire of all? he said, “A clearer vision of God,” it exactly expressed the continued strivings of his spirit for more light upon every possible question, which so constantly appear in his poems, which led him to join in founding the Metaphysical Society, and induced him to write the introductory sonnet in theNineteenth Century. Out of all such talks, at many times and places repeated, I came to know his actual personal position, in those years at any rate of the growth of old age, concerning the most vital problems of this world and this life. Many scores of such times have fallen to my happy lot, and my life has been all the richer for them.
I remember, when he went with me to Westminster Abbey to hear Dean Stanley preach Dickens’s funeral sermon, we sat within the rails of the Sacrarium so as to be near the pulpit, and when we came away he told me the story of the Oriental traveller who mistook the organ for the Church’s God. He was very fond of the story, and often repeated it. As he told it, the traveller was made to say: “We went into one of their temples to see their worship. The temple is only opened sometimes, and they keep their God shut up in a great gold box at one end of it. When we passed inside the doors we heard him grumbling and growling as if out of humour at being disturbed in his solitude; and as the worshippers came in they knelt down and seemed to supplicate him and try to propitiate him. He became quieter for a while, only now and then grumbling for a few moments, but then he got louder again and the whole body of the people stood up and cried to him together, and after a while persuaded him to be still. Presently he began once more and then, after praying all together several times, they deputed one of their number to stand up alone and address him earnestly on their behalf, deprecating his anger. He spoke so long without an interruption that it seemed the God had either fallen asleep or been finally persuaded into a better temper; but suddenly at last he broke out into a greater passion than ever, and with such tremendous noise and roarings that all the worshippersrose from their seats in fright and ran out of the temple.”
There was an immense congregation that day in the Abbey—and when the service was over—we stood up waiting a long time to pass out through the rails. But instead of dispersing by the outer door the people all turned eastward and flocked towards the altar, pressing closer and closer up to the Sacrarium. The chances of getting out became less and less, and I turned to Tennyson and said, “I don’t know what all this means, but we seem so hemmed in that it is useless to move as yet.” Then a man, standing close by me whispered, “I don’t think they will go, sir, so long as your friend stands there.” Of course I saw at once what was happening—it had got to be known that Tennyson was present, and the solid throng was bent on seeing him. Such a popularity had never occurred to me or to him, and justified his nervous unwillingness to be seen in crowded places. I was obliged to tell him what was going on, upon which he urgently insisted on being let out some quiet way and putting an end to the dilemma.
ByArthur Coleridge
But for the suggestion of the present Lord Tennyson, I should shrink from the presumption of posing as a friend of his illustrious father, who for three Easters made of me a companion, sometimes for two, more often three hours daily, for three weeks at a time together. I should be safe in saying that the most gifted men I have ever known, Tennyson, Browning, and Cory, were in the realms of thought, philosophy, and imagination foremost in an age which in two instances acknowledged their supremacy whilst they lived, and in the third has ungrudgingly admitted him as one taking high rank amongst the English poets of the second order. I link his name with that of the two great men, for I have abundant materials for forming my opinion of him in the shape of three volumes of correspondence, begun in my boyhood and continued for years during my friend’s lifetime.
Mr. Fitzherbert was a welcome friend of Dr. Johnson’s. “Ursa Major” warmed to him, though perfectly conscious that Fitz was anything but a star of the first magnitude. He says: “There was no sparkle, no brilliancy in Fitzherbert, but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He made everybody quite easy, overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think worse of himself by beinghis rival, seemed always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said.” “Such characters,” says Mr. Raleigh, “are the oil of society, yet a society made wholly of such characters would have no taste.”
Tennyson’s fidelity and patience with me were very much of a mystery; possibly I may have fitted his hand as a pet walking-stick; anyhow, I was “Man Friday to his Crusoe” as the play-actors say, and “constitutionals” with the Poet Laureate and his dogs, a wolf-hound or a deer-hound, Karénina or Lufra, were matters of daily occurrence in my Freshwater days. After 5 o’clock tea I left the Poet to “his sacred half-hour,” and his pipe of tobacco. By the way, he smoked straight-stemmed Dublin clay-pipes, and hated new pipes, which he would soak in coffee.
I believe that in the early days of our acquaintance the Poet, seeing me with what appeared to be a notebook under my arm, suspected me of Boswellizing, but I was duly warned and reassured him of my innocence. I simply recorded very briefly in my diary a few of his “dicta” which I wished to have for the benefit of my children, one of whom was a frequent and delighted listener to the Laureate’s reading of his own poems. Mary Coleridge, at that time a shy, timid girl, was more than once asked to dictate the particular poems she wanted him to recite. I can hear him saying, “Give me my seven-and-sixpenny” (meaning the single volume edition), and then we listened to the “high Orphic chant,” rather than the conventional reading of many of our favourite poems. I often asked for the “Ode on the Duke of Wellington,” and on one occasion, in the presence of Sir Charles Stanford—then organist of Trinity College, Cambridge—the Poet, lowering his voice at the words, “God accept him, Christ receive him,” added: “It’s a mighty anthem, that’s what it is.” Stanford’s music to “TheVoyage of Mældune” was written at Freshwater, and four of us visitors sang a lovely quartet in that work for the first time in the Poet’s presence. It was rather nervous work, for the composer and ourselves were anxious to satisfy the Poet in a work intended as a novelty for the Leeds Festival. The verdict was rather enigmatical: “I like the ripple of your music.” It met with a good reception at Leeds, and Madame Albani expressed a confident hope in my hearing that the work would become popular. I wish the prophecy had been adequately fulfilled, but English audiences, though, like the Athenians of old, clamouring for a new thing, are very cautious in giving more than one or two trials to musical novelties. It is lamentable to see works which have cost long years, perhaps a lifetime, of skilled experience, shelved in musical libraries or relegated to foreign audiences for adjudication of their real value.
It was my daily habit during the Easter holidays for three years to call at Farringford at 10.30, and present myself in the Poet’s sanctum, where I found him at his desk in the very act of hatching a poem or amending an old one. He would greet me with “Here comes my daily bread.” Then I read the newspaper or a book until we started for our morning walk. The dialogue would begin abruptly, starting from some impressions left by our musical rehearsals on the previous day. “Why is Stanford unable to set to music the word ‘cosmopolite’?” (See Appendix B.) The reasons seemed to me quite intelligible, but not so to a poet as fastidious as Wordsworth when discussing the Installation Ode with Professor Walmisley. I expect Purcell had more than one bad half-hour with Dryden, for the laws and regulations of musical accent may often conflict with the cadences and scansion adopted by the poet. Sir Charles Stanford and Sir Hubert Parry (lucida sidera) are rare instances of musical composerswith an instinctive appreciation of the fitness and adaptability of poetry offered for musical treatment.
Tennyson was loyal to the core on the subject of his old university, and amongst his constant visitors were some of my old contemporaries, Bradshaw, Lightfoot, and Montagu Butler. These, thefleurs finesof my day, were constant topics, and I eagerly listened to his recollections of the Cambridge men of his own generation. “Thompson” (afterwards Master of Trinity), he said, “was the last man I saw at Cambridge. I saw him standing at the door of the Bull Inn—his handsome face under a street lamp. We have been friends ever since.” He enjoyed the master’s witticisms, and especially “even the youngest among us is not infallible.”
The Professorship of Greek carried with it a Canonry of Ely, and Thompson’s times of residence were rather dreaded by the new holders of the office. His health, never of the best, was tried by the atmosphere, and finding the loneliness of his bachelor life insupportable, he begged an old College contemporary to pay him a visit. The friend came and was duly installed, but the sleeping accommodation was found wanting, and in answer to his petition for another bedroom with a good fire in it his host observed, “So sorry, my dear fellow, but I put five of my sermons into that bedroom, and if they have failed to dry it, nothing else will.”
T.“My tailor at Cambridge was a man of the name of Law. When he made his way into our rooms, and worried us about paying our bills, we used to say, ‘This is Law’s Serious Call.’ I capped this story with a similar Oxford tradition. The name of the Oxford tailor was Joy, and the undergraduates, soaked with port wine, used to say, ‘Heaviness may endure for a night, but Joy cometh in the morning.’”
T.“You cannot wonder at my horror of all the libels and slanders; people began to slander me in early days. For example, after my marriage we spent the honeymoon on Coniston Lake in a cottage lent to me by James Marshall. Shortly after this, a paragraph appeared in an American newspaper to the following effect: ‘We hope, now that Mr. Tennyson is married and has returned to his native lakes, that he will give up opium.’ The penny-a-liners evidently confounded your uncle, S. T. Coleridge, with myself—anyhow, if he wasn’t quite certain, he gave your relative the benefit of the doubt.”
“Again, I was once persuaded by an adventuress (who wrought upon me by her tale of hopeless poverty) to hear her read in my own drawing-room. She was in my house for exactly half an hour, and profited by her experience in telling her audiences that she had seen me thrashing my wife, and carried away drunk by two men-servants to my bedroom.”
One day we visited the grave of Lord Tennyson’s shepherd; he died at the age of ninety-one. On his death-bed Hallam asked him if he would remember in his will his two sons in Australia who had entirely ignored and neglected him. “No,” he said firmly; and he left his 17s. 6d. a year to the poorest man in the parish of Freshwater. On his tombstone are engraved the Laureate’s own words from “In Memoriam”:
God’s finger touched him and he slept.
I showed Lord Tennyson some manuscript verses by my friend Bernard Drake, who died at Madeira in 1853. He read them twice through, slowly and aloud. I had told him of Drake’s history, and then showed him the verses; their sadness impressed him greatly:
ON ILLNESS
Drake’s career at Eton and Cambridge really interested him, for my old friend was an ardent worshipper of the Poet in days before Tennyson’s fame had become a national asset. I showed with some pride “Of old sat Freedom on the heights,” translated into Latin Alcaics, a version very popular with Etonians and King’s men. Scholarship has made gigantic strides since it appeared; “those who know” can read and see if we overvalued it.
When distinguished visitors came to the Island, who were on terms of friendship with the Poet, I gave him warning that I should not appear on the scene and spoil their pleasure; but to this condition he would not assent, and I can recall frequent occasions when I must have been a fly in the ointment, and the Jowetts, Bradleys, and distinguished Americans would have wished me at Jericho. Once I felt entirely at my ease, for I determined to start the subject of Dr. Johnson, worshipped by me from my boyhood. I knew myBirkbeck Hill pretty well by heart, having quite recently read the six volumes of his edition of Boswell, notes and all, to a blind friend who rejoiced in hearing them. Further than that, I had made a pilgrimage to Lichfield, and by the kindness of a Mr. Lomax, who owned the relics, had examined and handled a varied assortment of goods and chattels, once undoubtedly the property of the great Samuel. The pedigree was thus accounted for by my courteous showman. After Dr. Johnson’s death, Barber, his black servant, migrated from London to Lichfield, “bringing his sheaves with him”; amongst thespolia opimawere a huge teapot and a manuscript copy of Devotions. Fortified with the recollections of this pilgrimage, and some out-of-the-way facts told to me by the residentiary Canon, my dear old friend Bishop Abraham, I started on a two hours’ walk with the Poet and Professor Jowett. It was easy to lead up to the theme of conversation—there was no difficulty whatever. I thought of Johnson’s own plan of extinguishing subjects which he intended at all costs to avoid. When Mrs. Neale asked his opinion of the conversational powers of Charles James Fox, “he talked to me one day at the Club,” said he, “concerning Catiline’s conspiracy, so I withdrew my attention and thought about Tom Thumb.” Every moment of that afternoon walk, Dr. Johnson was our theme, and we capped one another with long quotations from Boswell. Jowett chirped, the Poet gave wonderful emphasis and point to the oracles, often pausing suddenly in his walk, and cross-examining me on my remembered version of the actual words. I noted the upshot of our talk. Lord Tennyson agreed with the Master of Balliol “that Boswell was a man of real genius, and resembled Goldsmith in many points of character.”
Miss L——, Doctor Johnson’s godchild, used to tell a disagreeable story about him. Tennyson said about this:
T.“One should not lay stress on these oddities and angularities of great men. They should never be hawked about.”
T.“‘Break, break’ was made one early summer morning, in a Lincolnshire lane. ‘Crossing the Bar’ cost me five minutes one day last November.”
T.“At ten years of age I wrote an epic poem of great length—it was in the ‘Marmion’ style. I used to rush about the fields, with a stick for a sword, and fancied myself a conqueror advancing upon an enemy’s country.”
T.“My prize poem ‘Timbuctoo’ was an altered version of a work I had written at home and called ‘The Battle of Armageddon.’ I fell out with my father, for I had no wish to compete for the prize and he insisted on my writing. To my amazement, the prize was awarded to me. I couldn’t face the public recitation in the Senate House, feeling very much as Cowper felt; Merivale declaimed my poem for me in the Senate House.”
T.“Arthur Hallam said to me in 1832: ‘To-day I have seen the last English King going in State to the last English Parliament.’”
I believe that one of Tennyson’s first idylls was addressed to Miss K. Bradshaw, sister of my beloved friend Henry Bradshaw (fellow and librarian of King’s College, Cambridge), whose relationship to the Judge who condemned Charles I. was rather a tender point with H. B., both at Eton and King’s.
Because she bore the iron nameOf him who doomed his king to die,I deemed her one of stately frameAnd looks to awe her stander by.But find a maiden, tender, shy,With fair blue eyes and winning sweet,And longed to kiss her hand, and lieA thousand summers at her feet.
I pressed the Poet more than once to put on record his own interpretation of passages in “In Memoriam” and others which needed the authority of his own explanation. “Surely you took ‘four square to all the winds that blow’ from Dante’s
Ben tetragono ai colpi della Ventura?”
“No, it was not in my mind.” Again, I quoted his expression, “hollow shapes enclosing hearts of flame,” thinking it had arisen from Beckford’sVathek. The answer was “No, merely spectral visions.”
T.“Some of my poems depend on single sayings, single lines which have served me for a theme. My poem of ‘The Brigand’ is founded on a story told in the Autobiography of that great and gallant gentleman, Walter Scott.”
T.“Edward FitzGerald and I used to weary of the hopelessly prosaic lines in some books of ‘The Excursion,’ and we had a contest, the prize for which was to be for the weakest line by mutual consent that we could either of us invent. FitzGerald declared the line was his—it really was mine—‘A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.’” I wish I could have told him of Jem Stephen’s commentary on “Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” “That is no reason why we should lie about Heaven in our old age.” Among other passages he quotes with admiration Wordsworth’s lines on the “Simplon Pass.”
T.“I am sorry that I am turned into a school-book at Harrow; the boys will say of me, ‘That horribleTennyson.’ The cheapness of English classics makes the plan acceptable to schoolmasters and parents.”
He quoted with approval Byron’s line—
Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so.
“He was quite right. I, too, was so overdosed with Horace as a boy, that I don’t do him justice now I am old. I suppose Horace was the most popular poet that ever lived?”
Rough dissonant words in great poets were a trial to him; he declared that those horrid words,EingeweideandBeschützer, are the ruin of Goethe’s otherwise perfect lyrics.
T.“At Weimar the Grand Duchess sent an apology for not receiving me in person. After visiting Goethe’s study, bedroom and sitting-room, I was shocked by the meanness of the streets, and the horrid smells in the town itself. I felt as tetchy and vexed as Macbeth with his ‘out, out, brief candle,’ a passage so utterly misunderstood by Macready, who dropped his voice and gave the words a pathos that Iam quite surewas never intended.”
T.“The Tempesthas been dreadfully damaged by scenes intercalated by some common stage-adapter. At one time of my life I thought the Sonnets greater than the Plays. Some of the noblest things are inTroilus and Cressida.”
Perseverance, dear my Lord, keeps honour bright, etc.
T.“Have you observed a solecism in Milton’sPenseroso?
But let my due feet never failTo walk the studious cloisters pale,Andlovethe high embowed roofWith antique pillars massy proof, etc.”
T.“I do not remember getting from your cousin Hartley Coleridge the Sonnet you speak of, still less can I account for its being in the Library in the South Kensington Museum.”
This Sonnet is headed
Sonnet to Alfred TennysonAfter meeting him for the first timeLong have I known thee as thou art in song,And long enjoyed the perfume that exhalesFrom thy pure soul, and odour sweet entails,And permanence on thoughts that float alongThe stream of life to join the passive throngOf shades and echoes that are memory’s being,Hearing we hear not, and we see not seeingIf Passion, Fancy, Faith, move not amongThe never frequent moments of reflection.Long have I view’d thee in the chrystal sphereOf verse, that like the Beryl makes appearVisions of hope, begot of recollection.Knowing thee now, a real earth-treading manNot less I love thee, and no more I can.Hartley Coleridge.
T.“I liked Hartley Coleridge, ‘Massa’ Hartley’ as the rustics called him. He was a lovable little fellow. Once he said to me, ‘Had I been Colonel Burns (the Poet’s eldest son) I would have kicked Wordsworth for delivering that preachment.’ On one occasion Hartley, who was very eccentric, was asked to dine with the family of a stiff Presbyterian clergyman residing in the Lake district. The guests, Trappist fashion, sat a long time in the drawing-room waiting for the announcement of dinner. Not a word was uttered, and Hartley was bored to extinction. At last he suddenly jumped up from the sofa, kissed the clergyman’s wife, and rushed out of the house. He was wonderfully eloquent, and, I fancy, resembled his father in that respect.”
T.“I doubt that fine poem ‘Kubla Khan’ having beenwritten in sleep; I have often imagined new poems in my sleep, but I couldn’t remember them in the morning. Your uncle’s words: ‘Tennyson has no sense of rhythm and scansion,’ have been constantly quoted against me. The truth is that in my youth I used no hyphens in writing composite words, and a reader might fancy that from this omission I had no knowledge of the length and measure of words and expressions.”
T.“Burns was a great genius, but dreadfully coarse sometimes. When he attempts to write in pure English, he breaks down utterly.” He quoted many things of Burns’s: “O my Luv’s like a red, red rose,” and “Gae fetch to me a pint o’ wine,” etc., with the greatest admiration, and “Mary Morison” and “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon,” etc. “They have utterly ruined the lilt of the last,” he said, “when they added words for the musical setting.”
He was fond of talking about great pictures and fine sculpture. Birket Foster joined us one day, and Tennyson asked him to define the word “picturesque,” and to say why tumble-down cottages in the Isle of Wight were such favourite subjects with painters. B. F. answered that it was the breaking of the straight line. We talked of Frederick Walker, and B. F. told us many stories of his wit and conscientiousness. “I mean to paint a picture,” said he, “the key-note of which is to be onion-seed.”
Primrose Day.—T.“All the floral displays for which we Isle of Wighters suffer are based on a mistaken version of the Queen’s meaning, when she sent a wreath of primroses for Lord Beaconsfield’s grave, inscribed with ‘His favourite flower.’ She meant Prince Albert’s,not Lord Beaconsfield’s partiality for the flower in question.”
T.“I could imitate the hoot of an owl, and once practised successfully enough to attract one which flew in through my window. The bird soon made friends with me, would sit on my shoulder and kiss my face. My pet monkey became jealous, and one day pushed the owl off a board that I had had raised some feet from the ground. The owl was not hurt, but he died afterwards a Narcissus death from vanity. He fell into a tub of water contemplating his own beauty, and was drowned.”
The Poet admired Carlyle’sFrench Revolution, but he seemed surprised at my having read Carlyle’sFrederick the Great; the length of it had been too much for him. I was vexed by the author’s omission of an account of Sebastian Bach’s famous interview with the king at Potsdam, and pressed on my old friend Sir George Grove to inquire the reasons of so strange an omission. He ascertained that Carlyle not only knew the fact, but the actual day and date of the occurrence. The omission, therefore, was really of malice aforethought. Quantz, the flute-player, has his appropriate niche in the monumental work, but the great Sebastian is out of it altogether; the tootler takes the cake and be hanged to him.
Great sailors and soldiers were very favourite subjects. The Poet had personally known well one naval officer who had served with Nelson.
T.“Among many odd letters I have received,[69]an American curate wrote to me that he made a sudden resolution one Sunday that he would read ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ instead of his ordinary sermon.An old Dorsetshire soldier who had fought at Balaclava, happened to be in the congregation, though the preacher was unaware of the fact. The verses had the happy result of the soldier giving up a bad, reckless life, and completely reforming. My poem was never meant to convey any spiritual lesson, but the very curious fact of the chance soldier and the parson’s sudden resolution has often set me thinking.”
T.“Twice, I am glad to say, I have been taken into battle; once by Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars; another officer wrote after a fight: ‘I escaped with my life and my Tennyson.’ I admire General Hamley, a good writer and accomplished soldier.”
T.“When the Prince Regent explored the field of Waterloo with the Duke himself as guide, the Duke’s horse plunged and threw his rider. The Prince remarked, ‘I can now say what nobody else in the world can, that I saw the Duke of Wellington overthrown on the Field of Waterloo.’ His Grace was not over pleased with the observation.”
T.“Keats would have become one of the very greatest of all poets, had he lived. At the time of his death there was apparently no sign of exhaustion or having written himself out; his keen poetical instinct was in full process of development at the time. Each new effort was a steady advance on that which had gone before. With all Shelley’s splendid imagery and colour, I find a sort oftenuityin his poetry.”
T.“‘Locksley Hall’ is thought by many to be an autobiographical sketch; it’s nothing of the sort—not aword of my history in it. Read FitzGerald’sEuphranorand let me know what you think of it.”
One day we talked of Winchester and the rather meagre list of great men educated there. I rejoiced in the college boasting of analumnusin Lord Seaton, the famous leader of the 52nd Regiment at Waterloo. “I remember,”T.said, “addressing a coachman by whose side I was sitting as we drove in a coach through that place, and I asked him, ‘What sort of a place is Winchester?’ Answer: ‘Debauched, sir, debauched, like all other Cathedral cities.’”
T.“I am inclined to agree with Swinburne’s view of Mary Queen of Scots; she was brought up in a Court that studied the works of Brantôme.”
We often talked of Farrar’s book and Maurice’s opinions on Eternal Punishment. The Poet was fond of quoting Dante’s line:
Fecemi somma Sapienza ed il sommo Amore,
insisting on Dante’s intense belief in a God of Love. He more than once repeated the famous lines of Moschus,[70]adding, “I think those the finest lines in all Greek antiquity.”
T.“My friend, Sir Henry Taylor, on being called a Christian Jupiter, remarked, ‘I wish I was much more of a jovial Christian.’”
T.“I once asked Rogers, ‘Did you ever write a sonnet?’ He answered, ‘No, I never dance in fetters.’”
T.“I am told that the best prose version of theOdysseyis by Professor Palmer of Cambridge University, America. Since Matthew Arnold’s lectures on Homer, a new translation has appeared annually in that country. It would take me ten years to translate theIliadinto Bible English.” He liked Worsley’s translation of theOdyssey.
“The purest English is talked in South Lincolnshire. The dialect begins at Spilsby in Mid-Lincolnshire, and that is the dialect of my Lincolnshire poems.”
He was fond of telling Lincolnshire stories.T.“An old farmer, at the time when railways were beginning, receiving a visit from the parson, moved uneasily in his bed, crying out, ‘What with faäth, and what with real bad harvests, and what with them graät, horrid steäm-kettles, and what with the soön goin’ raound the earth, and the earth goin’ raound the soön, as soom saäy she do, I am cleän maäzed an’ the sooner I gits out of this ’ere world, the better;’ and he turned his face to the wall and died.”
I close my chapter of fragments and echoes still abiding with me; men privileged as I was can hear the voice and hate a gramophone. My aim has been to show the everyday life, the plain unvarnished words which were the daily change with the first man of his age and a rank-and-file acquaintance just able, and no more, to appreciate such kindness.
Haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
BySir Charles Stanford
My acquaintance, or rather my friendship, with Alfred Tennyson (for he had an all-compelling power of making real friends of, and being a true friend to, those far junior to himself) dated only from 1879, when he was in years seventy, but in mental vigour the contemporary of the youngest man he happened to be with. Previously, however, in 1875, I had had experience of his thoughtful kindness. He had chosen me, an unknown and untried composer, to write the incidental music to his tragedy of “Queen Mary” for its production at the Lyceum Theatre, then under the management of Mrs. Bateman. Many difficulties were put in the way of the performance of the music, into the causes of which I had neither the wish nor the means to penetrate. Finally, however, the management gave as an explanation that the music could not be performed, as the number of orchestral players required for its proper presentment would necessitate the sacrifice of two rows of stalls. To my young and disappointed soul came the news of a generous action which would have been a source of pride to many a composer of assured position and fame. The Poet had offered, unknown to me, to bear the expense of the sacrificed seats for many nights, in order to allow my small share of the work to be heard. The offer was refused, but the generous action remains—one amongst the thousands of such quiet andstealthy kindnesses which came as second nature to him, and were probably as speedily forgotten by himself as they were lastingly remembered by their recipients.[71]
He little knew that, when I was in my early ’teens and had the most absurdly exaggerated notions of my song-writing powers, I had had the presumption to ask my cousin, Mr. Stephen Spring Rice, if he would induce his old friend to send me a MS. poem to set. Happily, I only got a kindly but necessary rap over the knuckles for my impertinence; the request was consigned to the waste-paper basket and mercifully never reached Farringford. I tremble now to recall the incident, although I verily believe that if Mr. Spring Rice had been cruel enough to send my letter on, the smile which it must have provoked would in no wise have been a contemptuous one. I can imagine his saying then, what I have often heard him say in later days, “Maxima debetur pueris reverentia.” I had seen so much of Aubrey de Vere all through my boyhood that I almost felt as if I knew Tennyson too, so vivid were his accounts of him, and his descriptions of his ways and surroundings.
Joachim also, who all through the British part of his international career was in close touch with the Tennyson circle, used often to speak of him with the deep reverence and whole-hearted enthusiasm which he reserved for a very few. On the staircase at Farringford hangs Mrs. Cameron’s early (and still unsurpassed) photograph of the great violinist. My host pointed at it one day as he passed upstairs: “That’s Joachim. He’s a fine fellow. Why did he cover up that fine jowl with a beard?”—quite forgetful of the possible retort that he had committed the same wickedness himself. On the comparatively rare occasions when he came up to London, and was surrounded by all the stars in the literary and politicalfirmament, Joachim and his Stradivarius were as brilliant a centre of attraction as any of his guests. Joachim’s setting of Merlin’s song in “The Coming of Arthur” was an especial favourite of his, as both in atmosphere and in declamation it exactly fulfilled the intention of his verse. Joachim once told me that he always had great hankerings after setting “The Revenge,” but that he repressed them because he felt that it could only be tackled in the true English spirit by a Britisher.
The clue to Tennyson’s great critical power in declamation was obvious to any one who heard him recite his own work. His manner of reading poetry has often been described. It was a chant rather than a declamation. A voice of deep and penetrating power, varied only by alteration of note and by intensity of quality. The notes were few, and he rarely read on more than two, except at the cadence of a passage, when the voice would slightly fall. He often accompanied his reading by gentle rippling gestures with his fingers. As a rule he adhered more to the quantity of a line than the ordinary reciter, for he had the rare gift of making the accent felt, without perceptibly altering the prosody. Without being a musician, he had a great appreciation of the fitness of music to its subjects, and was an unfailing judge of musical declamation. As he expressed it himself, he disliked music which went up when it ought to go down, and went down when it ought to go up. I never knew him wrong in his suggestions on this point. The most vivid instance I can recall was about a line in “The Revenge”:
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew.
When I played him my setting, the word “devil” was set to a higher note in the question than it was in the answer, and the penultimate word “they” was unaccented. He at once corrected me, saying that thesecond word “devil” must be higher and stronger than the first, and the “they” must be marked. He was perfectly right, and I altered it accordingly. It was apparently a small point, but it was this insisting on perfection of detail which made him the most valuable teacher of accurate declamation that it was possible for a composer to learn from. Of all his poems which I heard him read, those he made most impressive were “The Revenge” and the “Ode on the Duke of Wellington.” It may be interesting to record a point in the latter which, he said, was often misread. The line
Let the bell be toll’d,
he read with strong emphasis upon the first as well as the third and fifth words:
— ◡ — ◡ —
not
◡ ◡ — ◡ —
He said it wanted three strokes of the bell, not two. “Maud” he also read with a most extraordinary warmth and charm, particularly the climax of “Come into the garden,” and still more the stanza about the shell (Part II.), which he gave in a peculiarly thin and ghostly tone of voice, a quality he also used with great mastery in the Choric Song of the “Lotus Eaters.” Nor was he less impressive when reciting Greek or German. Greek he vastly preferred as pronounced in the English fashion. He said it lost all its sonority and grandeur if modernized; and, indeed, to hear his illustration was in itself sufficient to convince. German he pronounced with a strong English accent, and yet I feel sure that Goethe himself would have acknowledged his reading of “Kennst du das Land” to be a masterpiece. He was a great admirer of Goethe, and especially of this poem. He only disliked one line—
O mein Beschützer, ziehn,
of which he said, “How could Goethe break one’s teeth with those z’s, while the rest is so musical?” Curiously enough, it is now known that Goethe erased “Beschützer” and substituted “Geliebter.” He once read to me from his works for nearly half an hour.
He was extremely particular about clear diction in singing, the lack of which in the majority of singers of his day was far more marked than it is nowadays. He intuitively grasped the true basis of that most difficult of tasks, the composing of a good song which is at once practical and grateful to sing. He knew that the poem should be the key to the work, and should be so clearly enunciated that every word can reach the listener; and that the composer must never over-balance the voice with the illustrative detail of the accompaniment. When I was setting “The Voyage of the Mældune” I happened to be at Freshwater; and after finishing the solo quartet, “The Under-sea Isle,” four amateurs sang it through for him. His only (and I fear very just) comment on the performance was, “I did not hear a word you said from beginning to end.” But he thought afterwards that we might feel somewhat crushed, and as I was going away some little time later, and was passing his door, he put his head out and said with a humorous smile, “I’m afraid I was rather rude just now, but I liked the way your music rippled away when they fall into the water.” This was a most curious instance of his faculty for recognizing a subtle piece of musical characterization as rapidly as, and often more rapidly than, a listener who was fully equipped with musical technique.
His ear was capable of such fine distinctions of vowel quality, that it has always been a mystery to me why this gift, so highly developed in him, did not bring a mastery of music in its train. By one of the odd dispensations of nature, Robert Browning, who had none of this fineness ofear, knew enough of music to be able even to read it from a score with his eyes. Such words as “true” and “too,” which in most people’s mouths have an identical vowel sound, were differentiated by him, the “oo” full and round, the “ue” inclining imperceptibly to “u.” His “a” also had far more varied colours than is usual even with singers. One modification in especial, the quality of which can best be described as approaching that of “Eh, mon,” in broad Scotch, gave a breadth and a dignity to such words as “Nation,” “Lamentation,” “Pāgeant” (he never used the horrible pronunciation “Padgent”), which added vastly to the musical values of his verse. It is this perfection of vowel balance which makes his poetry so difficult to set to music satisfactorily. So musical is it in itself that very little is left for actual music to supply. It is often the very incompleteness of some poetry which makes it suggestive to a composer, the qualities lacking in the one calling out for the assistance of the other to supply them, a condition of combination which Wagner deliberately carried to a fine art in his double capacity of poet and composer. With Tennyson there is no gap to fill, and all that music can do is to illustrate the surrounding atmosphere, and to leave the poetry to tell its own story with its declamation and inflections accurately preserved.
The best reproduction of the peculiar quality of Tennyson’s reading which I have heard was Irving’s rendering of the lines about the bird in the last act of “Becket”:
We came uponA wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still,I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir;The snow had frozen round her, and she satStone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.
The mastery of sound-painting in this line, the chilly “o’s” and “e’s” which the Poet knew so well how to place, Irving declaimed with a quiet reverence whichmade the sentence so pathetic that it will always live in the memory of those who heard it. It is interesting to record that all the actors I have met who witnessed the play invariably hit on those lines as the high-water mark of Irving’s powers.