Home Life of Great Authors by Hattie Tyng Griswold

Author:Hattie Tyng Griswold [Griswold, Hattie Tyng]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

ALFRED TENNYSON.

It is related by Miss Thackeray that the grandfather of Alfred Tennyson, when that poet was young, asked him to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently died, and when it was written gave him ten shillings, with the remark, "There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last." How little he foresaw at that time the fame and fortune which the youth's poetry was to bring him, and the lasting honor he was to bestow upon the family name! That name was already an honorable one, for the Tennysons were an old family, and had good blood in their veins. The home was the old rectory of Somersby, where George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., held sway in the old-time priestly fashion for a lifetime. He is described as a man of strong character and high principle, full of accomplishments, and gifted withal; a strikingly handsome man, with impressive manners. Twelve children were given to his hands, of whom Alfred was the third. The eldest, Frederick, and the second, Charles, were both poets, and not without merit,—especially Charles, who published a volume of sonnets, which gave great pleasure to so good a judge as Coleridge; and the Laureate is himself very fond of his brother's work.

The children led a very free and unconstrained life in that beautiful part of Lincolnshire, and had a few friends to whom they attached themselves for life. Arthur Hallam was Alfred's intimate, and later on he became engaged to one of his sisters. Young Hallam's early death was the first shadow upon their lives. But who would not willingly die at twenty-three to be immortalized in such a poem as "In Memoriam"?

Of Arthur Hallam's own quality as a poet we get a pleasant glimpse in the sonnet addressed to his betrothed when he began to teach her Italian:—

"Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,

Ringing with echoes of Italian song;

Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong,

And all the pleasant place is like a home.

Hark, on the right, with full piano tone,

Old Dante's voice encircles all the air;

Hark yet again, like flute-tones mingling rare

Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca's moan.

Pass thou the lintel freely; without fear

Feast on the music. I do better know thee

Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me

Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear."

After Tennyson had made his first literary successes, and after the family life at Somersby was broken up, we next hear of him through a warm and life-long friend. Away back in 1844 Carlyle in one of his letters to Emerson gives the following description of the then young and rising poet. It is an authentic glimpse of the real man, as he then appeared to one of the shrewdest and most critical of the men of that day.

"Tennyson is now in town, and means to come and see me. Of this latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred

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