II

In the autumn of 1890, in response to a kindly invitation, Irving visited Aldworth, the lovely home which Tennyson made for himself under the brow of Blackdown. It was nine years since the two men had had opportunity for a real talk. Sunday, October 19, was fixed for the visit. I was invited to lunch also, and needless to say I looked forward to the visit, for it was to be the first opportunity I should have of seeing Tennyson in his own home.

On the Sunday morning Irving and I made an early start, leaving Victoria Station by the train at 8.45 and arriving at Haslemere a little after half-past ten. Blackdown is just under mountain height—one thousand feet; but it is high enough and steep enough to test the lungs and muscles of man or beast. It was a typically fine day in autumn. The air was dry and cold and bracing, after a slight frost whose traces the bright sun had not yet obliterated. All was bright and clear around us, but the hills in the distance were misty.

Aldworth is a wonderful spot. Tennyson chose it himself with a rare discretion. It is, I suppose, the most naturally isolated place within a hundred miles of London. Doubtless this was an element in his choice, for he is said to have had a sickening of publicity at his other home, “Farringford,” at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. The house lies just under the brow of the hill to the east and faces south. This side of the hill is very steep, and now that the trees which he planted have grown tall the house cannot be seen from anywhere above. It is necessary to go miles away to get a glimpse of it from below. When he bought the ground it was all mountain moorland and he had to make his own roads. The house is of stone with fine mullioned windows, and the spaces everywhere are gracious. In front, which faces south, is a small lawn bounded by a stone parapet with a quickset hedge below and just showing above the top of the stonework. From here you look over Sussex right away to Goodwood and the bare Downs above Brighton. A glorious expanse of country articulated with river and wood and field of seeming toy dimensions. It would, I think, be impossible to find a more ideal place for quiet work. From it the howling, pushing, strenuous world is absolutely shut out; the mind can work untrammelled, fancy free. To the west lies a beautiful garden fashioned into pleasant nooks and winding alleys, with flower-starred walks, and bowers of roses, and spreading shrubs. Behind it rise some fine forest trees. The garden trends some way down the hillside, opening to seas of bracken and the dim shelter of pine woods. In the fringes these woods in due season are filled with a natural growth of purple foxglove, the finest I have ever seen. Just below where the garden ends is a level nook, a corner between shelving lines of tree-clad hill where a tiny stream flows from a vigorous bubbling well. Just such a nook as Old Crome or Nasmyth would have loved to paint.

Photo Dickinsons

HENRY IRVING AS CHARLES I.

Hallam Tennyson met us at the door. When we entered the wide hall, one of the noticeable things was quite a number of the picturesque wide-brimmed felt hats which Tennyson always wore. I could not but notice them, for a certain similarity struck me. In the house of Walt Whitman at Camden, New Jersey, was just such a collection of hats; except that Walt Whitman’s hats—he being paralysed and not naturally careful of his appearance at that time of life—were worn out. Walt only got a new hat when the old one was badly worn. But he did not part with the old ones even then.

After a short visit to Lady Tennyson in the drawing-room we were brought upstairs to Tennyson’s study, a great room over the drawing-room, with mullioned windows facing south and west. We entered from behind a great eight-fold screen some seven or eight feet high. In the room were many tall bookcases. The mullioned windows let in a flood of light. Tennyson was sitting at a table in the western window writing in a book of copybook size with black cover. His writing was very firm. He had on a black skull-cap. As we entered he held up his hand saying:

“Just one minute if you don’t mind. I am almost finished!” When he had done he threw down his pen and rising quickly came towards us with open-handed welcome.

I went with Hallam to his own study, leaving Irving alone with Tennyson. Half an hour later we joined them and we all went out for a walk. In the garden Tennyson pointed out to us some blue flowering pea which had been reared from seed found in the hand of a mummy. He stooped a little as he walked; he was then eighty-two, but seemed strong and was very cheerful—sometimes even merry. With us came his great Russian wolf-hound which seemed devoted to him. We walked through the grounds and woods for some three miles altogether, Hallam and Irving walking in front. As I walked with Tennyson we had much conversation, every word of which comes back to me. I was so fond of him and admired him so much that I could not, I think, forget if I tried anything which he said. Amongst other things he mentioned a little incident at Farringford, when in his own grounds an effusive lady, a stranger, said at rather than to him, of course alluding to the berries of the wild rose, then in profusion:

“What beautiful hips!”

“I’m so glad you admire ’em, ma’am!” he had answered, and he laughed heartily at the memory. I mention this as an instance of his love of humour. He had intense enjoyment of it.

He also mentioned an error made by the writer of Tennyson Land of a dog which in Demet Vale saved the child of an old local farmer.

“It’s a lie,” he said, “I invented it all; though there was such a character when I was a boy. When he was dying he said:

“‘Th’ A’mighty couldn’t be so hard. An’ Squire would be so mad an’ a’!’” He said it in broad Lincolnshire dialect such as he used in The Northern Farmer. Tennyson was a natural character-actor; when he read or spoke in dialect he conveyed in voice and manner a distinct impression of an individual other than himself.

Then he told me some Irish anecdotes generally bearing on that quality in the Irish nature which renders them unsatisfied. He suggested a parody of a double row of shillelaghs working automatically on each side “and then they would be unsatisfied!” At another time he spoke to me in the same vein.

Then I told him some Irish dialect stories which were new to him and which really seemed to give him pleasure. I told him also some of the extravagant Orange toasts of former days whereat he laughed much. Then turning to me he said:

“When we go in I want to read you something which I have just finished; but you must not say anything about it yet!”

“All right!” I said, “of course I shall not. But why, may I ask, do you wish it so?”

“Well, you see,” he said, “I have to be careful. If it is known that I am writing on a particular subject I get a dozen poems on it the next day. And then when mine comes out they say I plagiarised them!”

In the course of our conversation something cropped up which suggested a line of one of his poems, The Golden Year, and I quoted it. “Go on!” said Tennyson, who seemed to like to know that any one quoting him knew more than the bare quotation. I happened to know that poem and went on to the end of the lyrical portion. There I stopped:

“Go on!” he said again; so I spoke the narrative bit at the end, supposed to be spoken by the writer:

“He spoke; and, high above, I heard them blast

The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap

And buffet round the hills, from bluff to bluff.”

Tennyson listened attentively. When I spoke the last line he shook his head and said:

“No!”

“Surely that is correct?” I said.

“No!” There was in this something which I did not understand, for I was certain that I had given the words correctly. So I ventured to say:

“Of course one must not contradict an author about his own work; but I am certain those are the words in my edition of the poem.” He answered quickly:

“Oh, the words are all right—quite correct!”

“Then what is wrong?” For answer he said:

“Have you ever been on a Welsh mountain?”

“Yes! on Snowdon!”

“Did you hear them blast a slate-quarry?”

“Yes. In Wales, and also on Coniston in Lancashire.”

“And did you notice the sound?” I was altogether at fault and said:

“Won’t you tell me—explain to me. I really want to understand?” Accordingly he spoke the last line; and further explanation was unnecessary. The whole gist was in his pronunciation of the word “bluff” twice repeated. He spoke the word with a sort of quick propulsive effort as though throwing the word from his mouth.

“I thought any one would understand that!” he added.

It was the exact muffled sound which the exploding charge makes in the curves of the steep valleys.

This is a good instance of Tennyson’s wonderful power of onomatopœia. To him the sound had a sense of its own. I had another instance of it before the day was over.

That talk was full of very interesting memories. Perhaps it was apropos of the peas grown from the seed in the mummy hand, but Lazarus in his tomb came on the tapis. This stanza of In Memoriam had always been a favourite of mine, and when I told him so, he said:

“Repeat it!” I did so, again feeling as if I were being weighed up. When I had finished:

“He told it not; or something seal’d

The lips of that Evangelist:”

he turned to me and said:

“Do you know that when that was published they said I was scoffing. But”—here both face and voice grew very very grave—“I did not mean to scoff!”

When I told him of my wonder as to how any sane person could have taken such an idea from such a faithful, tender, understanding poem he went on to speak of faith and the need of faith. There was, speaking generally, nothing strange or original to rest in my mind. But his finishing sentence I shall never forget. Indeed had I forgotten for the time I should have remembered it from what he said the last interview I had with him just before his death:

“You know I don’t believe in an eternal hell, with an All-merciful God. I believe in the All-merciful God! It would be better otherwise that men should believe they are only ephemera!”

When we returned to the house we lunched, Lady Tennyson and Mrs. Hallam Tennyson having joined us. Then we went up again to the study, and Tennyson, taking from the table the book in which he had been writing, read us the last-written poem, The Churchwarden and the Curate. He read it in the Lincolnshire dialect, which is much simpler when heard than read. The broadness of the vowels and their rustic prolongation, rather than drawl, adds force and also humour. I shall never forget the intense effect of the last lines of the tenth stanza. The shrewd worldly wisdom—which was plain sincerity of understanding without cynicism:

“But niver not speäk plaain out, if tha wants to git forrards a bit,

But creeäp along the hedge-bottoms, an’ thou’ll be a Bishop yit.”

Tennyson was a strangely good reader. His voice was powerful and vibrant, and had that quality of individualism which is so convincing. You could not possibly mistake it for the voice of any one else. It was a potent part of the man’s identity. In his reading there was a wonderful sense of time. The lines seem to swing with an elastic step—like a regiment marching.

In a little time after came his hour for midday rest; so we said good-bye and left him. Irving and I went for a smoke to Hallam’s study, where he produced his phonograph and adjusted a cylinder containing a reading of his father’s. Colonel Gouraud had taken special pains to have for the reception of Tennyson’s voice the most perfect appliance possible, and the phonograph was one of peculiar excellence, without any of that tinny sharpness which so often changes the intentioned sound.

The reading was that of Tennyson’s own poem, The Charge of the Heavy Brigade. It was strange to hear the mechanical repetition whilst the sound of the real voice, which we had so lately heard, was still ringing in our ears. It was hard to believe that we were not listening to the poet once again. The poem of Scarlett’s charge is one of special excellence for phonographic recital, and also as an illustration of Tennyson’s remarkable sense of time. One seems to hear the rhythmic thunder of the horses’ hoofs as they ride to the attack. The ground seems to shake, and the virile voice of the reader conveys in added volume the desperate valour of the charge.

With Hallam we sat awhile and talked. Then we came away and drove to Godalming, there to catch our train for London. The afternoon sun was bright and warm, though the air was bracing; and even as we drove through the beautiful scene Irving’s eyes closed and he took his afternoon doze after his usual fashion.

I think this visit fanned afresh Irving’s wish to play Becket. I do not know what he and Tennyson spoke of—he never happened to mention it to me; but he began from thence to speak of the play at odd times.