Complete Works of Bram Stoker (656 page)

After breakfast Hallam and I walked in the beautiful wood behind the house, where beyond the hedgerows and the little wood rose the great bare rolling Down, at the back of which is a great sheer cliff five hundred feet high. We sat in the summer-house where Tennyson had written nearly all of Enoch Arden. It had been lined with wood, which Alfred Tennyson himself had carved; but now the bare bricks were visible in places. The egregious relic-hunters had whittled away piecemeal the carved wood. They had also smashed the windows, which Tennyson had painted with sea-plants and dragons; and had carried off the pieces When we returned I was brought up to Tennyson’s room.

He was not feeling well. He sat in a great chair with the cut play on his knee, one finger between the pages as though to mark a place. He had been studying the alterations; and as he did not look happy, I feared that there might be something not satisfactory with regard to some of the cuts. Presently he said to me suddenly:

“Who is God, the Virgin?”

“Who is what?” I asked, bewildered as to his meaning. I feared I could not have heard aright.

“God, the Virgin! That is what I want to know too. Here it is!”

As he spoke he opened the play where his finger marked it. He handed it to me and there to my astonishment I read:

“I do commend my soul to God, the Virgin.” When Irving had been cutting the speech he had omitted to draw his pencil through the last two words. The speech as written ran thus:

“I do commend my soul to God, the Virgin, St. Denis of France, and St. Alphege of England, And all the tutelary saints of Canterbury.”

In doing the scissors-work, he had been guided by the pencil-marks, and so had made the error.

The incident amused Tennyson very much, and put him in better spirits. We went downstairs into what in the house is called the “ ballroom “  —  a great sunny room with the wall away from the light covered with a great painting by Lear of a tropical scene intended for Enoch Arden. Here we walked up and down for a long time, the old man leaning. on my arm. He told me that he had often thought of making a collection of the hundred best stories.

“Tell me some of them? “ I asked softly. Whereupon he told me quite a number, all excellent. Such as the following:

“A noble at the Court of Louis XIV. was extremely like the King, who, on it being pointed out to him, sent for him and asked him:

“Was your mother ever at Court? Bowing low he replied:

“No, sire I But my father was! ‘“

Again:

“Colonel Jack Towers was a great crony of the Prince Regent. He was with his regiment at Portsmouth on one occasion; and was in Command of the Guard of Honour when the Prince was crossing to the Isle of Wight. The Prince had not thought of his being there, and was surprised when he saw him. After his usual manner he began to banter:

“‘ Why, Jack, they tell me you are the biggest blackguard in Portsmouth! ‘ To which the other replied, bowing low:

I trust that your Royal Highness has not come down here to take away my character! ‘“

Again:

“Silly Billy  —  the sobriquet of the Duke of Gloucester  —  said to a friend:

“‘ You are near a fool as you can be! ‘ He too bowed as he answered:

“‘ Far be it from me to contradict your Royal Highness! ‘“

III

That evening at dinner Tennyson was, though far from well in health, exceedingly bright in his talk. To me he seemed to love an argument and supported his side with an intellectual vigour and quickness which were delightful. He was full of insight into Irish character. He asked me if I had read his poem, The Voyage of Maeldune; and when I told him I had not yet read it he described it and repeated verses. How the Irish ship sailed to island after island, finding in turn all they had longed for, from fighting to luscious fruit, but were never satisfied and came back, fewer in numbers, to their own island. In the drawing-room he said to me, as if the idea had struck him, I daresay from something I said:

“Are you Irish? “ When I told him I was he said very sweetly:

“You must forgive me. If I had known that I would not have said anything that seemed to belittle Ireland.”

He went to bed early after his usual custom. That evening in the course of conversation the name of John Fiske the historian, and sometime a professor of Yale University, came up. To my great pleasure, for Fiske had been a close friend of mine for nearly ten years, Tennyson spoke of him in the most enthusiastic way. He asked me if I knew his work. And when I replied that I knew well not only the work but the man, he answered:

“You know him! Then when you next meet him will you tell John Fiske from me that I thank him  —  thank him most heartily and truly  —  for all the pleasure and profit his work has been to me! “ “ I shall write to him to-morrow! “ I said. “ I know it will be a delight to him to have such a message from you!”

“No! “ said Tennyson, “ Don’t write! Wait till you see him, and then tell him  —  direct from me through you, how much I feel indebted to him!”

I did not meet John Fiske till 1895. When the message was delivered it was from the dead.

IV

On the next morning I saw Tennyson again in his bedroom after early breakfast. He looked very unwell, and was in low spirits. Indeed he seemed too dispirited to light his pipe, which he held ready in his hand. He said that he had not yet got the lines he wanted: “ The Voice of the People is the Voice of God “  —  or: “ The Voice of the People is the Voice of England! “ I think that he had been over the altered text again and that some of the cutting had worried him. Before I came away after saying good-bye he said suddenly, as if he had all at once made up his mind to speak:

“I suppose he couldn’t spare me Walter Map?”

Walter Map was a favourite character of his in the original Becket. He it is who represents scholarly humour in the play.

When I told Irving about this he was much touched, and said that he would go over the play again, and would, if he possibly could see his way to it, retain the character. He spent many days over it; but at last came to the conclusion that it would not do.

At this last meeting  —  at that visit  —  when I asked Tennyson what composer he would wish to do the music for his play he said:

“Villiers Stanford! “ He and Irving had independently chosen the same man. How this belief was justified is known to all who have heard the fine Becket music.

V

On September 25 the same year, 1892, my wife and I spent the day with Lord and Lady Tennyson at Aldworth. We were to have gone a week earlier, but as Tennyson was not well the visit was postponed. We left Waterloo by the 8.45 train. At the station we were joined by Walter Leaf, the Homer scholar, who had been at Cambridge with Hallam. We had met him at Lionel Tennyson’s years before. The day was dull but the country looked very lovely, still full of green though the leaves were here and there beginning to turn. The Indian vines were scarlet. A carriage was waiting and we drove to Aldworth, meeting Mrs. Tennyson on her way to church. On Blackdown Common the leaves were browner than in the valley, and there was a sense of autumn in the air; but round the house, where it was sheltered, green still reigned alone. Far below us the plain was a sea of green, with dark lines of trees and hedgerows like waves. In the distance the fields were wreathed with a dark film  —  a sapphire mystery.

We all sat awhile with Lady Tennyson, who was in the drawing-room on a sofa away from the light. She had long been an invalid. She was perhaps the most sweet and saintly woman I ever met, and had a wonderful memory. She had been helper and secretary to her husband in early days, trying to save him all the labour she could; and she told us of the enormous correspondence of even that early time. Presently Hallam took us all up to his father, who was in his study overhead.

The room was well guarded against cold, for we had to pass from the door all along one side of it through a laneway made between the bookcases and the high manifold screen. Tennyson was sitting on a sofa with his back to the big mullioned window which looked out to the south. He had on a black skull-cap, his long thin dark hair falling from under it. He seemed very feeble, a good deal changed in that way during the five months that had elapsed since I had seen him. His fine brown nervous hands lay on his lap. Irving had the finest and most expressive hands I have ever seen; Tennyson’s were something like them, only bigger. When he began to talk he brightened up. Amongst other things he spoke of the error in the alteration of Becket, “ God the Virgin.” We did not stay very long, as manifestly quietude was best for him, and no one else but ourselves was allowed to see him that day. Presently we all went for a walk, Mrs. Allingham, the painter, who was an old and close friend of the Tennysons, joining us. As we went out we had a glimpse from the terrace of Tennyson reading; part of his book and the top of his head were visible. At that time the lawn presented a peculiar appearance. There had come a sort of visitation of slugs, and the grass was all brown in patches where paraffin had been poured on it.

VI

After lunch Hallam brought Walter Leaf and me up to the study again. Tennyson had changed his place and now sat on another sofa placed in the north-west corner of the room. He was much brighter and stronger and full of intellectual fire. He talked of Homer with Walter Leaf, and in a fine deep voice recited, in the Greek, whole passages  —  of the sea and the dawn rising from it. He spoke of Homeric song as “ the grandest sounds that can be of the human voice.” He spoke very warmly of Leaf’s book, and said he would have been proud to have been quoted in it. He ridiculed the idea of any one holding that there had been no such person as Homer. He thought Ilium was a “ fancy “ town  —  the invention of Homer’s own imagination. Doubts of Homer brought up doubts as to Shakespeare, and the Bacon and Shakespeare controversy which was then raging. He ridiculed the idea. From the Shakespeare side he was indignant at a doubt. From the Bacon side he was scornful: “ What ridiculous stuff! “ he said. “ Fancy that greatest of all love-poems, Romeo and Juliet, written by a man who wrote: ‘ Great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion! ‘ “ (From Bacon’s Essay on Love.)

I told him the story which I had heard General Horace Porter  —  the Ambassador of the United States to France  —  tell long before. It may be an old story but I venture to tell it again:

“In a hotel out West ‘ a lot of men in the barroom were discussing the Shakespeare and Bacon question. They got greatly excited and presently a lot of them had their guns out. Some one interfered and suggested that the matter should be left to arbitration. The arbitrator selected was an Irishman, who had all the time sat quiet smoking and not saying a word  —  which circumstance probably suggested his suitability for the office. When he had heard the arguments on both sides formally stated, he gave his decision:

“Well, Gintlemin, me decision is this: Thim plays was not wrote be Shakespeare! But they was wrote be a man iv the saame naame! ‘“

Tennyson seemed delighted with the story.

Then he spoke of Shakespeare, commenting on Henry VIII, which had been running all the year at the Lyceum. He mentioned Wolsey’s speech, speaking the lines:

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition.”

Then he added in a very pronounced way:

“Shakespeare never wrote that! I know it! I know it! I know it! “ As he spoke he smote hard upon the table beside him.

After a long chat we left Tennyson to have his afternoon nap, and smoked in the summer-house. Then we walked to the south-west edge of Blackdown. The afternoon was very clear and we could see the hills of the Isle of Wight, which Hallam said he had never before seen from there.

VII

After tea Hallam took Leaf and me again to his father. After a while we were joined there by Mrs. Tennyson and my wife. Tennyson was then very feeble, but cheerful. He told us a lot of stories and incidents  —  his humour and memory were quick in him that evening.

One was of the landlord of a hotel at Stirling. He had, during a trip in Scotland, telegraphed to the hotel to have rooms kept. When he arrived he was delighted with them. They were on the first floor, airy and spacious, and in all ways desirable. He felt pleased at being treated with such consideration. After dinner he was sitting by the open window smoking his pipe when he heard a conversation going on below. One of the speakers was the landlord, the other a stranger. Said the latter:

“I hear you have Tennyson staying with you to-night?”

“Aye! That’s the man’s name. He telegraphed the day for rooms. Do ye ken him?”

“Know him! Why that’s Alfred Tennyson, the poet!”

“The poet! I’m wishin’ I had kent that! “ “ Why? “ asked the stranger. After a pause the answer came:

“He a poet! I’d ha’ seen him dommed before I had gied him ma best rooms!”

As he was reminiscent that night his anecdotes were mostly personal. Another was of a man of the lower class in the Isle of Wight, who spoke of him in early days:

“He, a great man! Why ‘e only keeps one manservant  —  an’ e’ don’t sleep in th’ ouse!”

Another was of a workman who was heard to say:

“Shakespeare an’ Tennyson! Well, I don’t think nothin’ of neither on ‘em!”

Another was of a Grimsby fishmonger, who said when asked by an acquisitive autograph hunter if he happened to have any letters from Tennyson:

“No! His son writes ‘em. He still keeps on the business; but he ain’t a patch on his fayther! “ Tennyson was sitting on the sofa as he had been in the morning. For all his brightness and his humour, which seemed to bubble in him, he was very feeble and seemed to be suffering a good deal.

He moaned now and then with pain. Gout was flying through his knees and jaws. He had then on his black skull-cap, but he presently took it off as though it were irksome to him. In front of him was a little table with one wax candle lighted. It was of that pattern which has vertical holes through it to let the overflow of melted wax fall within, not without. When the fire of pleasant memory began to flicker, he grew feeble and low in spirits. He spoke of the coming spring and that he would not live to see it. Somehow he grew lower in spirits as the light died away and the twilight deepened, as if the whole man was tuned to nature’s key. Through the window we could note the changes as evening drew nearer. The rabbits were stealing out on the lawn, and the birds picking up grubs in the grass.