Tennysoniana/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
TEN YEARS' SILENCE AND ITS RESULTS.
Two different causes may account for our Poet's silence during the next ten years (1833–1842);[1] his overwhelming grief for the loss of his friend, and the desire to perfect himself in his art.
A record of this ten years' apprenticeship to the Muses would be deeply interesting, could we get it; but we must not pry too closely into the private history of a poet:
No blazon'd statesman he, nor king."
At any rate he has been profiting by the admonitions of reviewers, friendly or inimical, and is pruning, clipping, cutting, and clearing his garden of weeds and noxious excrescences. That is to say, he is ruthlessly drawing his pen through one poem, and revising another, till it is scarcely recognizable as the juvenile production from which it sprung.
All this while, too, section after section of "In Memoriam" is being painfully and slowly elaborated; and at last comes out of the furnace, like the refiner's silver, seven times purified. The world, however, did not see it until 1850.
But at length, in 1842, after many and repeated calls for a new edition of the former volumes, which had long been out of print,[2] appeared: "Poems by Alfred Tennyson. In Two Volumes. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLII."
The first volume contained two divisions, 1. A selection from the volume of 1830 (many of the poems untouched, and none having received more than a few verbal alterations); 2. Some dozen poems, from the volume of 1832, almost entirely rewritten,[3] together with six or seven new pieces,[4] written, with one exception, in 1833.
The second volume contained poems entirely new, with the exception of "The Sleeping Beauty," a portion of "The Day-Dream," originally published in the volume of 1830, and the poem of "St. Agnes," which, as we have already seen, was originally printed in 1837. We propose to examine the contents, taking each poem separately, and noting some of the changes made in subsequent editions.
"The Epic":
His epic of King Arthur in the fire!'"
1842–1846.
Remodel models rather than the life?
And these twelve books of mine (to speak the truth)
Were faint Homeric echoes,'" &c.
1842–1843.
"Morte d'Arthur," l. 56:
1842–1853.
Across the ridge and paced beside the mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought."
The italicised line was added in the eighth edition (1853).
The whole of this poem has now been incorporated into the last of the "Idyls of the King," entitled "The Passing of Arthur;" but it is, notwithstanding, still retained in its former position among the poems of 1842, probably for the sake of preserving the fine Introduction and Epilogue, which would be out of place in its new setting.
The "Morte d'Arthur" would seem to have been written as early as 1837. "Yesterday," writes Landor (under date 9th December, 1837), "a Mr. Moreton, a young man of rare judgment, read to me a manuscript by Mr. Tennyson, very different in style from his printed poems. The subject is the death of Arthur. It is more Homeric than any poem of our time, and rivals some of the noblest parts of the Odyssea."[5]
Made me most happy, lisping 'I am thine.'"
1842–1850.
"Dora," The following Note was appended to the editions of 1842 and 1843:
"The Idyl of 'Dora' was partly suggested by one of Miss Mitford's pastorals; and the ballad of 'Lady Clare' by the novel of 'Inheritance.'"[6]
The story by Miss Mitford thus alluded to is that of "Dora Cresswell" in "Our Village." (See a letter on this subject printed in the "Athenæum," Sept. 1, 1866.) A comparison of this tale with Tennyson's poem will be found very interesting. The poem itself remains unaltered, as it stood in the first edition.
"Audley Court." The line,
"A rolling stone of here and everywhere,"
was added in the edition of 1855.
"Walking to the Mail." This poem originally opened thus:
Is yonder planting where this byway joins
The turnpike?
James. Yes.
John. And when does this come by?
James. The mail? at one o'clock.
John. What is it now?
James. A quarter to.
John. Whose house is that I see
Beyond the watermills?
James. Sir Edward Head's:
But he's abroad: the place is to be sold."
1842.
James. You saw the man but yesterday:
He pick'd the pebble from your horse's foot.
His house was haunted by a jolly ghost
That rummaged like a rat. No servant stay'd."
1842–1851.
We paid in person, scored upon the part
1842.Which cherubs want."
"St. Simeon Stylites." Unaltered.
"The Talking Oak." One unimportant, verbal alteration.
Too sadly for their peace, so put it back
For calmer hours in memory's darkest hold,
If unforgotten! should it cross thy dreams
So might it come like one that looks content"
1842–1850.
"Ulysses." Unaltered.
A line of this poem was quoted by Thomas Carlyle, in "Past and Present" (1843), p. 49, from which we may conclude that the first edition of these Poems had fallen into his hands, and been read by him.
The poem of "Ulysses" is founded on a passage in the "Divina Commedia" of Dante.
In the following lines—
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use,
As tho' to breathe were life,"
there seems to be a remarkable resemblance of thought and expression to a speech of Ulysses, in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" (act iii. sc. 3).
Keeps honour bright. To have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
In monumental mockery."[7]
"Locksley Hall," says a well-known writer in Fraser, "bristles with verbal alterations which every careful reader of Tennyson knows."[8] I have found only five.
Here are four lines from different parts of the poem, as they stood in 1842:
In the volume of Selections, published in 1865, the fifth line of the poem reads thus:
"Locksley Hall that half in ruin overlooks the sandy tracts,"
but the original reading, "in the distance," is still retained in the collected edition of the Poems.
"Godiva." Unaltered.
"The Two Voices." Dated 1833 in the first edition.
- Prologue.
- The Sleeping Palace.
- The Sleeping Beauty. (Poems, chiefly Lyrical, p. 143.) Slightly altered.
- The Arrival.
- The Revival.
- The Departure.
- Moral.
- L'Envoi.
- Epilogue.
A few verbal alterations only.
"Amphion." The first four lines of the fifth stanza originally ran thus:
The bramble cast her berry,
The gin within the juniper
Began to make him merry."
1842–1853.
In the last stanza but one:
The poor things look unhappy."
1842–1850.
"St. Agnes' Eve." This poem, as we have seen, was printed in "The Keepsake" for 1837, pp. 247, 248. It was slightly altered on its reappearance in 1842. The title was changed from "St. Agnes" to "St. Agnes' Eve," in the edition of 1855.
| Sir Galahad. | Unaltered. | |
| Edward Gray. |
"Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue":
"Like Hezekiah's backward runs
The shadow of my days."
"Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days."
The expression, "whirligig of Time," is borrowed from Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night" (act v. sc. ult,).
"Lady Clare." This poem originally opened thus:
I trow they did not part in scorn;
Lord Ronald, her cousin, courted her,
And they will wed the morrow morn."
1842-1850.
The stanza which now stands as the sixteenth,
"The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought," &c.,
was added in 1851.
We have already seen that the ballad of "Lady Clare" was suggested by Miss Ferrier's novel of "The Inheritance."
"The Lord of Burleigh." Unaltered.
"Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere."
In stanza 1,
"The topmost linden gather'd green "
is the reading of the earlier editions.
"A Farewell." Unaltered.
"The Beggar Maid." Probably suggested by the line in Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet" (act ii. sc. 1).
There is an old ballad on the subject in the first volume of Percy's "Reliques."
"The Vision of Sin." One verbal alteration in the second line of the fifth section.
There are two additional lines towards the end in the volume of Selections:
Give him new nerves with old experience,'"
"The Skipping Rope." Omitted in all editions subsequent to the sixth (1850).
"Move eastward, happy earth, and leave."
Line 9:
"Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne,"
in the earlier editions.
"Break, break, break." Unaltered.
"The Poet's Song." Unaltered.
To subsequent editions were added the following poems:
"Edwin Morris; or, the Lake." First printed in the seventh edition, 1851.
"The Golden Year." First printed in the fourth edition, 1846.
"To ———, after reading a Life and Letters." First included in the sixth edition, 1850.[9] The second part of the title was added, and a verbal alteration made, in the eighth edition (1853).
"To E. L., on his Travels in Greece." First printed in the edition of 1853. Addressed to Edward Lear, the landscape-painter, on his book entitled "Journals of Tours in Central and Southern Italy and Albania." Edward Lear is also the author of the famous "Book of Nonsense." (See "Athenæum," April 16, 1870).
"The Eagle; a Fragment." First printed in the edition of 1851.
"Come not when I am dead." First printed in "The Keepsake" for 1851, under the title of "Stanzas," and included in the seventh edition of the Poems, with a slight alteration, or more probably correction of a misprint.
All these additional pieces, except the lines "To E. L." and "The Eagle," have undergone more or less important alterations in successive editions, since their first appearance.
The Poems in two volumes passed through four editions, bearing the dates of 1842, 1843, 1845, and 1846. They were incorporated into one volume in the fifth edition (1848) and in all succeeding editions. The sixth edition appeared in 1850; the seventh (or first Laureate) edition in 1851; and the eighth in 1853.
Almost immediately on the publication of the volumes of 1842, Alfred Tennyson was welcomed by acclamation as the first poet of the century. Nearly all the choicer spirits of the age conspired to chant his praises and to do him honour, among whom were some little accustomed to bestow lavish or indiscriminating approval. Even the saturnine historian of the French Revolution, who cherishes a supreme contempt for modern poetry in general, quoted from him.[10] All England rang with the stirring music of "Locksley Hall." To John Sterling was committed the task of reviewing him in the "Quarterly"[11] in a very different strain to the flippant attack of ten years before. Those also who had given him encouragement when his earlier volumes appeared, now saw their predictions verified.
Wordsworth writes to Professor Reed, under date July 1, 1845:—"I saw Tennyson when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most value in my attempts, viz the spirituality with which I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances."[12]
His fame spread rapidly to America, where his poems were reprinted. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lowell, Margaret Fuller, and Edgar Poe added their tribute of admiration, "I am not sure," says the last-named, "that Tennyson is not the greatest of poets. The uncertainty attending the public conception of the term 'poet' alone prevents me from demonstrating that he is. Other bards produce effects which are, now and then, otherwise produced than by what we call poems, but Tennyson an effect which only a poem does. His alone are idiosyncratic poems. By the enjoyment or non-enjoyment of the 'Morte d'Arthur,' or of the 'Œnone,' I would test any one's ideal sense."
"There are passages in his works which rivet a conviction I had long entertained, that the indefinite is an element in the true ποιησις. Why do some persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy-pieces as the 'Lady of Shalott'? As well unweave the ventum textilem. If the author did not deliberately propose to himself a suggestive indefinitiveness of meaning, with the view of bringing about a definitiveness of vague and therefore of spiritual effect—this, at least, arose from the silent analytical promptings of that poetic genius which, in its supreme development, embodies all orders of intellectual capacity.
Tennyson's shorter pieces abound in minute rhythmical lapses sufficient to assure me that, in common with all poets, living or dead, he has neglected to make precise investigation of the principles of metre; but, on the other hand, so perfect is his rhythmical instinct in general, that he seems to see with his ear."[13]
Margaret Fuller writes in August, 1842: "I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson. Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world in rosy light. He has not suffered himself to become a mere intellectual voluptuary, nor the songster of fancy and passion, but has earnestly revolved the problems of life, and his conclusions are calmly noble. In these later verses is a still, deep sweetness; how different from the intoxicating, sensuous melody of his earlier cadence! I have loved him much this time, and taken him to heart as a brother. One of his themes has long been my favourite—the last expedition of Ulysses—and his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad. How finely marked his slight description of himself and of Telemachus! In 'Dora,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'The Two Voices,' 'Morte d'Arthur,' I find my own life, much of it, written truly out."[14]
No great reputation, however, has been without its assailants little spirits who do their best or worst to undermine the fame they can never hope themselves to reach, and Alfred Tennyson was not more fortunate than the rest.
The attack was commenced by the authors of the "Bon Gaultier Ballads," [15] in a series of offensive and ribald parodies, spiced with a good deal of personal insult. "The Biter Bit" is a parody of "The May Queen;" "The Lay of the Lovelorn," of "Locksley Hall;" "The Laureate" (written on the death of Southey in 1843) is a parody of "The Merman," and is chiefly noticeable as containing an anticipatory mention of Tennyson in connexion with the Laureateship seven years before he succeeded to that office.
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket his gold.
'Tis I would be the Laureate bold," &c.
"Caroline "is a parody of some of the portraits of women—Lilian, Adeline, &c.
Wretched, indeed, must be the taste that such things as these can please, where "every noble thought is turned into a joke or quibble, the rich creations of a poet's fancy transformed into ribaldry and jest, and the harmonious expression of his grandest thoughts metamorphosed into clownish barbarism."[16]
The occasion of the unprovoked attack upon Tennyson by the author of "Pelham," was the announcement in the newspapers, in the autumn of 1845, that the Government had conferred a pension on our poet, which we have heard was granted, not as a reward for literary merit, but as compensation for some claim his family had on the Crown.[17] Be this as it may, however, there appeared anonymously in the winter of that year a satire, entitled "The New Timon: a Romance of London," well-known to be the production of the eminent novelist alluded to, in which not only was Tennyson's poetry spoken of as "'a jingling medley of purloin'd conceits," "patchwork-pastoral," "tinsel," and the like—but he himself was stated in a footnote to be "quartered on the public purse in the prime of life, without either wife or family."[18]
Tennyson retorted in some bitter lines, entitled "The New Timon and the Poets," and signed "Alcibiades," which appeared in "Punch,"[19] February 28, 1846.[20] In the following number there appeared some further stanzas, entitled "Afterthought," with the same signature, written in a gentler mood. This latter piece the Laureate has lately included in the collected edition of his writings; but he was too generous to perpetuate the earlier satire, and the offensive passage was removed from the third edition of "The New Timon."
The poet has outlived these feeble attacks, and now his fame rests on an impregnable basis; his assailants also lived to regret their short-sightedness. But as matters pertaining to literary history, this short account of them will not be considered out of place here.
Of the haunts of Alfred Tennyson during these years, and onwards to 1850, when he purchased the estate of Farringford, and was married (at Shiplake Church, Oxfordshire) to Miss Emily Sellwood,[21] a lady from his own native county of Lincolnshire, and of his personal history during the same time, we are able to give but a very meagre account. For some time he lived at Twickenham, making it, as was said by one who has passed away all too soon from among us, "twice classic."[22] William Howitt writes in 1847: "It is very possible you may come across him in a country inn, with a foot on each hob of the fireplace, a volume of Greek in one hand, his meerschaum in the other, so far advanced towards the seventh heaven that he would not thank you to call him back into this nether world." Towards the middle of the century we find him a frequent visitor at the chambers of John Forster, to whom he entrusts the Farewell Sonnet to Macready, to read it at the dinner given to the latter on his retirement from the stage, March 1, 1851.[23] He seems also to have been now and then a visitor at the house of Landor, who on one occasion sent him the following playful invitation:
Come and share my haunch of venison.
I have too a bin of claret
Good, but better when you share it.
Tho' 'tis only a small bin,
There's a stock of it within,
And as sure as I'm a rhymer,
Half a butt of Rudesheimer.
Come; among the sons of men is one
Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson?"[24]
The following is from the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson:[25]
"31st January, 1845. I dined this day with Rogers. We had an interesting party of eight. Moxon, the publisher; Kenny, the dramatic poet; Spedding, Lushington, and Alfred Tennyson, three young men of eminent talent belonging to literary Young England—the latter, Tennyson, being by far the most eminent of the young poets. He is an admirer of Goethe, and I had a long tête-à-tête with him about the great poet. We waited for the eighth—a lady[26]—who, Rogers said, was coming on purpose to see Tennyson."
- ↑ A silence not, however, altogether unbroken. In 1837 the poem of "St. Agnes" appeared in the "Keepsake," and in the same year Tennyson contributed some stanzas to "The Tribute; a Collection of Miscellaneous Unpublished Poems, by Various Authors, Edited by Lord Northampton." This volume elicited the first notice of Tennyson from the "Edinburgh Review," which had till then been silent respecting him. "We do not profess," says the reviewer, "perfectly to understand the somewhat mysterious contribution of Mr. Alfred Tennyson, entitled 'Stanzas;' but "amidst some quaintness, and some occasional absurdities of expression, it is not difficult to detect the hand of a true poet—such as the author of 'Mariana' and the 'Lines on the Arabian Nights' undoubtedly is—in those stanzas which describe the appearance of a visionary form, by which the writer is supposed to be haunted amidst the streets of a crowded city."—Ed. Rev. October, 1837, p. 108.
These stanzas, beginning "O that 'twere possible," were eighteen years afterwards incorporated into the poem of "Maud;" " recovered," says George Brimley, "from the pages of a long-forgot ten miscellany, and set as a jewel amid jewels." Mr. Swinburne has more recently spoken of them as "the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written even by Mr. Tennyson;" since recast into new form and refreshed with new beauty "to fit it for reappearance among the crowning passages of 'Maud.'"—Academy, January 29, 1876.
"The Tribute" also contains two short pieces by Charles (then the Rev. Charles) Tennyson, "To a Lady" and "Sonnet on some Humming Birds." The literary association of the two brothers was renewed at a more recent period, when they both became contributors to "Macmillan's Magazine." - ↑ "One of the severest tests by which a poet can try the true worth of his book, is to let it continue for two or three years out of print. The first flush of popularity cannot be trusted. Admiration is contagious, and means often little more than sympathy with the general feeling—the pleasure of being in the fashion. A book which is praised in all the reviews thousands will not only buy, but be delighted with; and thus a judicious publisher may contrive, by keeping it cleverly in people's way, to preserve for years a popularity which is merely accidental and ephemeral. But if this be all, the interest in it will cease as soon as it becomes difficult to procure. Let a man ask for it two or three times without getting it, he will take to something else; and his curiosity, unless founded on something more substantial than a wish to see what others are looking at, and a disposition to be pleased with what others praise, will die away. If, on the other hand, a new edition be perseveringly demanded, and when it comes, be eagerly bought, we may safely conclude that the work has something in it of abiding interest and permanent value; for then we know that many people have been so pleased or so edified by the reading that they cannot be content without the possession. To this severe test, the author of the unpretending volumes before us has submitted an infant and what seemed to many a baseless and precarious reputation; and so well has it stood the test for we understand that preparations are already making for another edition as to give him an undeniable claim to the respectful attention of all critics."
"The book must not be treated as one collection of poems, but as three separate ones, belonging to three different periods in the development of his mind, and to be judged accordingly. Mr. Tennyson's first book was published in 1830, when he was at college. His second followed in 1832. Their reception, though far from triumphant, was not inauspicious; for while they gained him many warm admirers, they were treated even by those critics whose admiration, like their charity, begins and ends at home, as sufficiently notable to be worth some not unelaborate ridicule. The admiration and the ridicule served alike to bring them into notice, and they have both been for some years out of print."—Edinburgh Review, April, 1843, pp. 373–374. - ↑ "The Dream of Fair Women," considerably altered in this edition, was again retouched in the editions of 1845 and 1853.
- ↑ Two of these pieces, "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" and "The Blackbird," have received slight alterations in subsequent editions. In the former poem (st. 7) we had originally "The gardener Adam" instead of "The grand old gardener," and in "The Blackbird":
"I better brook the drawling stares,
Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse—
Not hearing thee at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares."And there is a curious but unimportant alteration in another stanza of the same poem.
- ↑ Forster's "Life of Landor," ii. 323.
- ↑ "The Inheritance." By the author of "Marriage." Edinburgh: William Blackwood. 3 vols. 1824. The heroine of this novel is a Miss St. Clair.
- ↑ Communicated by a correspondent.
- ↑ A. K. H. B., in "Fraser's Magazine," February, 1863, p. 213, § "Concerning Cutting and Carving."
- ↑ "It had appeared, however, previously, in "The Examiner" of March 24, 1849, and there are several minute verbal differences between the earlier and later versions.
- ↑ Carlyle's "Past and Present" (1843).
- ↑ "Quarterly Review," lxx. pp. 385–416. Reprinted in Sterling's Remains, i. pp. 422–462.
- ↑ "Memoirs of William Wordsworth" (London, 1851), vol ii p. 416.
- ↑ "Democratic Review" (New York, December, 1844), p. 580.
- ↑ "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli" (London, 1852), ii. 258,259.
- ↑ "The Book of Ballads," edited by Bon Gaultier (the joint work of Theodore Martin and the late William Edmondstoune Aytoun), (London, 1845), pp. 5, 13, 32,148. Our poet is also alluded to as "young Tennyson," in "The Laureate's Tourney," p. 25. In the parody of "Locksley Hall," his address is given as "A. T., Chelsea." Tennyson was living at Little Holland House, Kensington, at this time.
- ↑ Remarks on Virgil Travesty, in a privately-printed essay ("The School of Pantagruel," Sunbury, 1862).
- ↑ "We understand that Mr. Alfred Tennyson, the poet, has been placed on the pension-list by Sir Robert Peel, for an annuity of £200."—Athenæum, October 18, 1845.
- ↑ The New Timon: a Romance of London" (Henry Colburn, 1846), pp. 51-53. It is curious that already, in the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" (1843), the author of " Eugene Aram", is made to speak of Tennyson as a "small poetic raver" ("A Midnight Meditation," by Sir E——— B——— L——— "Ballads," first edition, p. 37).
- ↑ Already, on February 7, another writer had taken up his defence in a cutting epigram, entitled, "The New Timon and Alfred Tennyson's Pension."
- ↑ "Strong men shall presently take hold of his bâton, and lay about them with prodigious effect. Even Tennyson shall write some stinging satire here, and Tom Hood make thousands weep."—Life of Douglas Jerrold, by his son Blanchard Jerrold (London, 1859), p. 193.
"When Sir Bulwer Lytton, in his poem of 'The New Timon,' alluded to Mr. Tennyson in disparaging terms as "Miss Alfred, no one was surprised to read, in a few days, that terribly trenchant copy of verses in which Mr. Tennyson called Sir Bulwer a Bandbox, and showed that the true Timon was quite a different man from the Bandbox with his mane in curl-papers."—A. K. H. B., Good Words (1863), p. 593. - ↑ June 13, 1850. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. D. Rawnsley, the Vicar, and witnessed by Cecilia Lushington, Edmund Law Lushington, Catherine Ann Rawnsley (wife of the vicar), and Henry Sellwood, father of the bride.
- ↑ From an unpublished letter in blank verse addressed to the Poet Laureate, by the late George John Cayley, author of "Las Alforjas" "Sir Reginald Mohun" &c."I had rather see you in your home
That makes twice classic Twickenham—" - ↑ "Mr. John Forster said he had been entrusted with a few lines of poetry by his friend the Poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson, addressed to their distinguished guest, and it was left to his discretion whether he should read them in public tonight or not. He thought he ought, and was sure he should have permission to do so."—People's and Howitt's Journal, April, 1851, p. 150.
- ↑ "The Last Fruit off an Old Tree," by Walter Savage Landor (London: Edward Moxon, 1853), p. 368.
- ↑ Vol. iii. pp. 200, 201.
- ↑ This proved to be the Hon. Mrs. Norton.