Chapter XXXV: Section 104: brings us to another Christmas. Four years have elapsed

since that last described. The Tennysons have left Somersby, with what regret they did so is beautifully told in the four sections immediately preceding this. And now, listening as of old for the Christmas bells, he hears not “four voices of four hamlets round,” but only

“A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.”

The following section continues the subject. They are living at High Beech in Essex “within the stranger’s land.” He thinks of the old home and garden and his father’s grave. The flowers will bloom as usual, but there, too, are strangers,

“And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.”

The change of place

“Has broke the bond of dying use.”

They put up no Christmas evergreens, they attempt no games and no charades. His sister Mary does not touch the harp and they indulge in no dancing, though it was a pastime of which they were extremely fond. But as of old Alfred looks out into the night and sees the stars rise, “The rising worlds by yonder wood,” and receives comfort. All this points to the sad year 1837, when they left the well-beloved place of his birth. And now in section 106 we have a New Year’s hymn of a very different character. It has a jubilant sound, and was certainly written some years after its predecessors. In 1837 he was in no mood to say “Ring happy bells across the snow.” But there is no allusion in this splendid hymn to Arthur Hallam at all, and in the following section they keep Arthur’s birthday, not any more in sadness, but

“We keep the day, with festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate’er he be
And sing the songs he loved to hear.”

But to return to Somersby.

[Sidenote: THE OLD HOME]

The quaint house with its narrow passages and many tiny rooms, the brothers’ own particular little western attic with its small window from which they could see the ‘golden globes’ in the dewy grass which had “dropped in the silent autumn night,” the dining-room and its tall gothic windows with carved heads and graceful gables, the low grey tower patched with brick, just across the road, (for the “noble tall towered churches” spoken of in _The Memoir_ are not in this part of the county,) and the pre-Reformation (not “Norman”) cross near the porch, all these may still be seen much as they were one hundred years ago.

[Sidenote: THE CHURCH RE-OPENED]

True, the church has been lately put in good repair, and a fine bronze bust of the poet placed in the chancel. This was unveiled, and the church re-opened on Sunday, April 6, 1911, being the fulfilment of the plan projected on the occasion of the centenary celebration two years previously. On that Sunday the little church was more than filled with neighbours and relatives who listened to sermons from the Bishop of Lincoln and the Rev. Canon Rawnsley. Next day was Bank Holiday, and in a field near the rectory hundreds of Lincolnshire folk of every kind—farmers, tradespeople, gentry, holiday makers—assembled to do honour to their own Lincolnshire poet, and for a couple of hours listened intently to speeches about him and laughed with a will at the humours of the “Northern Farmer” read in their own native dialect, just as the poet intended; whilst the relatives of the poet and those who were familiar with his works looked with glad interest upon a scene of rural beauty which brought to the mind the descriptions in _The Lady of Shalott_, seeing on the slopes before them the promise of crops soon to “clothe the wold and meet the sky,” while far away to the left stretched the valley which pointed to Horncastle, the home of the poet’s bride, and on the right was the churchyard where the stern “owd Doctor” rests, and the church where for five and twenty years he ministered. The whole was a remarkable assemblage and a remarkable tribute, and the setting was a picture of quiet English rural life, one which the poet himself must often have actually looked out upon, and such as he has himself beautifully described in _The Palace of Art_:—

“And one an English home—gray twilight pour’d
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace.”

[Sidenote: A LONG-LIVED FAMILY]

The spirit of the poet seemed still to be a haunting presence in the place, and as then, so now and for all time his works speak to us. But three-quarters of a century have passed since a Tennyson has had his home in Somersby. They left in 1837, and though Mary went back at times to see the “beloved place,” Alfred never set eyes on it again. Charles married in that year Louisa Sellwood, whose mother was a sister of Sir John Franklin, and thirteen years later Alfred married her sister Emily. They left Somersby; but Lincolnshire still kept possession of Charles, who took the name of Turner in addition to his own, and ministered happily at Grasby near Caistor, being both vicar and patron of the living; and he and his wife both died there in the spring of 1879, at the comparatively early age, for a Tennyson, of seventy-one, for the family have been a remarkably long-lived one.

The Mother died in 1865, aged 84
Charles ” ” 1879 ” 71
Mary ” ” 1884 ” 74
Emilia ” ” 1889 ” 78
Alfred died on October 6, 1892 ” 83
Emily Lady Tennyson died in 1896 ” 83
Frederick ” ” 1898 ” 91
Arthur died in June, 1899 ” 85
Horatio died in October, 1899 ” 80
Cecilia died in 1909 ” 92

Matilda, who was born before Cecilia and Horatio, still survives. I went to see her in the summer of 1913. I found her well and full of early memories. She was a girl in the schoolroom when she first saw Arthur Hallam, an event of which she had a vivid recollection. I said, “I suppose you get out every fine day for a drive.” “Oh,” she said, “I go out for a walk every day and take the dog.” I thought that rather wonderful at her age. “Yes, I am ninety-seven,” she said, “and I mean to live to be 105.” I told her how Queen Victoria, who was always looking forward to reunion with the dear departed—but ever a ceaseless worker—used to say, “my dear, you should always act as if you were going to live for ever.”

[Sidenote: THE MASTER’S OPINION]

Alfred, who succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850, was raised to the Upper House in 1884. He is buried in Westminster Abbey side by side with his great contemporary, Robert Browning, and on his grave was laid a wreath of bay-leaves from a tree derived from the bay which flourishes over Virgil’s tomb near Naples, and on the wreath were Tennyson’s own magnificent lines, written at the request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of their poet’s death (1881).

“I salute thee, Mantovano,
I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
Ever moulded by the lips of man.”

[Sidenote: THE POET’S RANGE OF KNOWLEDGE]

The recent appearance (October, 1913) of a notable volume of Tennyson’s poems, introduced by a Memoir and concluding with the poet’s own notes, may well serve as the text for some remarks on his poems generally. The volume bound in green cloth is priced at 10_s._ 6_d._ The Memoir is somewhat abbreviated from the two interesting volumes published by his son in 1897, which appeared again as the first four volumes of Messrs. Macmillan’s fine twelve-volume edition of 1898. There are, however, a few additions, notably a letter from the Master of Trinity, Cambridge, telling how he once, years ago, asked Dr. Thompson, the Master, whether he could say, not from later evidence, but from his recollection of what he thought at the time, which of the two friends had the greater intellect, Hallam or Tennyson. “Oh, Tennyson,” he said at once, with strong emphasis, as if the matter was not open to doubt. This is very high praise indeed, for Gladstone said that Hallam was far ahead of anyone at Eton in his day, and Monckton Milnes thought him the only man at Cambridge to whom he “bowed in conscious inferiority in all things.” The Notes first appeared in the very pleasant “Annotated Edition” edited also by Hallam Lord Tennyson within the last five years. The present generation can never know the delight of getting each of those little green volumes which came out between ’32 and ’55, and sequels to which kept following till ’92. But for general purposes it is far more convenient to have a one-volume edition, such as we have had for some time now. This new edition, however, with its Memoir, gives us what, as the years go by, is more and more valuable, enabling us to read the poet in his verses and to know what manner of man he was, and how his environment affected him at the different stages of his life. The Notes add an interest, and though it is seldom that in any but the _In Memoriam_ Cantos any explanation is needed to poems that are so clear and so easily intelligible, one gains information and finds oneself here and there let into the author’s secrets, which is always pleasant. The book runs to over a thousand pages, and is so beautifully bound that it lies open at any page you choose. There is an interesting appendix to the Notes, giving the music to “The Silent Voices,” composed by Lady Tennyson and arranged for four voices by Dr. Bridge for Lord Tennyson’s funeral at the Abbey, October 12, 1892. Also a previously unpublished poem of his later years, entitled “Reticence.” She is called the half-sister of Silence, and is thus beautifully described:—

“Not like Silence shall she stand,
Finger-lipt, but with right hand
Moving toward her lip, and there
Hovering, thoughtful, poised in air.”

Then comes a facsimile of the poet’s MS. of “Crossing the Bar,” finally, besides the usual index of first lines, the book ends with an index to _In Memoriam_, and, what we have always wanted, an index to the songs.

Undoubtedly in the future this new edition will be the Tennyson for the library shelf, and a very complete and compact volume it is. Personally, I like the little old green volumes, but if I were now recommending an edition not in one volume, I would say, “Have the Eversley or Annotated Edition in nine volumes, which exactly reproduces the page and type of those old original volumes with the added advantage of the Notes.” It is hardly to be expected that the spell with which Tennyson bound all English-speaking people for three generations should not in a measure be relaxed, but though we have a fuller chorus of singers than ever before, and an unusually appreciative public, the attempt so constantly made to decry Tennyson has no effect on those who have for years found in him a charm which no poet has surpassed, and, indeed, it will be long before a poet arises who has, as Sir Norman Lockyer observes, “such a wide range of knowledge and so unceasing an interest in the causes of things and the working out of Nature’s laws, combined with such accuracy of observation and exquisite felicity of language.” Let me give one more criticism, and this time by a noted scholar, Mr. A. Sidgwick, who speaks of his “inborn instinct for the subtle power of language and for musical sound; that feeling for beauty in phrase and thought, and that perfection of form which, taken all together, we call poetry.” That perfection was the result of labour as well as of instinct. He had an ear which never played him false, hence he was a master of melody and metre, and he was never in a hurry to publish until he had got each line and each word right. “I think it wisest,” he wrote to one of his American admirers, “for a man to do his work in the world as quietly and as well as he can, without much heeding the praise or dispraise.” He was a lover of the classics, and in addressing Virgil on the nineteenth centenary of his death, as quoted above, he himself alludes to this. Without being what we call a great scholar, in his classic poems he is hard to beat, while in his translations of Homer he certainly has no equal. Then in his experiments in classic metres, whether in the “Metre of Catullus” or in the Alcaics in praise of Milton, his perfect accuracy is best understood if we turn to the similar experiments by living poets, who never go far without a blunder, at least none that I have ever read do.

[Sidenote: THE DIALECT POEMS]

To the Lincolnshire folk, his dialect poems, written in the dialect which was current in his youth at Spilsby and in the country about it (and still used there, I am glad to say, though not so universally or so markedly as of yore), give genuine pleasure, and are full of humour and of character, and it is a tribute to his accurate ear and memory that, after an absence of some twenty-seven years, he should have got the Lincolnshire so correct. He did it all right, but for fear he might have forgotten and got wrong, he asked a friend to look at it and criticise; unfortunately the friend lived in the north of the county and knew not the dialect of “Spilsbyshire,” so he altered it all to that which was spoken about Brigg, which is more like Yorkshire, and it had to be put back again. But some of the northern dialect has stuck, and in “The Northern Farmer Old Style” the ‘o’ is seen in ‘moind,’ ‘doy,’ ‘almoighty,’ etc., where the Spilsby sound would be better rendered by using an ‘a.’ This ‘o’ is never found in any of his subsequent dialect poems, and in a note to the text in the “Northern Cobbler” the poet points out that the proper sound is given by ‘ai.’

[Sidenote: FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS]

One sign of the remarkable way in which our Lincolnshire poet has made himself the poet of the English-speaking race is the extraordinary number of familiar quotations which he has given us. For the last fifty years in book and newspaper, in speech and sermon, some line or some phrase of his has constantly occurred which the user felt certain that his hearer or readers would recognise, until our literature has become tessellated with Tennysonian expressions, and they have always given that satisfaction which results from feeling that in using his words we have said the thing we wished to say in a form which could not be improved upon. In this respect of “daily popularity and application,” I think Shakespeare alone excels him, though Pope and Wordsworth may run him close.