MEMORIES
By E. V. B.
How kind to ask for some of my few small memories of your father—treasured memories which no length of years can ever rub out. And how much I like to recall them, though, alas! there is so little; it was so seldom that we met in those unforgotten times. Once, I remember, I sent him a rose from my garden, a black beauty, rather rare in those old days—“L’Empereur de Maroque,” now quite cut out by “Prince Camille de Rohan.” I keep the little word of thanks that came afterwards in return:
My dear E. V. B.—Many thanks for your more amiable than beautiful Black Rose. I don’t mean to be personal, but am, yours always,
Tennyson.
Another of his notes is the one wherein he gave me leave to illustrate “The May Queen.” His words in the note were: “I would rather you than any one else should do it.” His poems were a joy to me, even in childhood—from the days when, dull lesson hours, etc., being done, I could steal away and no one know, and, sitting on the carpet by the home book-shelves, read over and over on the sly from a bound volume (one of Blackwood’s Magazines), where were long extracts from Tennyson’s poems, especially the earlier ones, and amongst them one called “Adeline.” There was certainly a magic in the poetry, scarce found elsewhere—magic even for a child of ten.
Summer-house at Farringford, where “Enoch Arden” was written.
Carved and painted by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Do you remember how you used to tell me that your father had a great love for the red rose? He sent me, for my Ros Rosarum, lines on a Rosebud by himself:
The Rosebud
The night with sudden odour reel’d,
The southern stars a music peal’d,
Warm beams across the meadow stole,
For Love flew over grove and field,
Said, “Open, Rosebud, open, yield
Thy fragrant soul.”
I know he loved the poet’s colour—lilac. A long-past scene in the garden at Farringford still remains in the mind’s eye fresh and vivid—painted in with memory’s fast colours among the pictures of remembrance.
The sunshine of a morning at Farringford in early summer when we came up the long middle walk, bordered on either side with lilac-flowered aubretia, led up to the open summer-house where Tennyson, with two or three friends, sat in the sun, enjoying the warmth and the lovely lines of lilac. We turned towards the house after a time, going under the budding trees of the grove. There he pointed out some young bushes of Alexandrian laurel—the same, he told us, whose small narrow leaves were used to make the crown for victors in the Olympian games....
Then—can I ever forget?—that delightful evening at Aldworth, when, after dinner, he invited me to his room upstairs. There he smoked his pipe in his high-backed, cane arm-chair, while I sat near. On a little table by the fire were arranged several more of these well-smoked Dublin pipes. Such a large, comfortable “smoke-room”!—with books about everywhere, on tables and chairs. Then he read to me aloud from “Locksley Hall.” I think he read all the poem from the beginning to the end; and as Tennyson read on—one seemed almost to feel the pungent, salt sea-breeze blowing from over desolate seas—almost saw visions of the dreary sands lengthening far away. I remember I ventured to ask why the stanza which follows after that line, “And all the wonder that should be,” was afterwards omitted:
In the hall there hangs a picture—Amy’s arms about my neck,
Happy children in a sunbeam, sitting on the ribs of wreck.
In my life there was a picture—she that clasp’d my neck is flown,
I was left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone.
I began saying the lines, but he knew them quite well and repeated them. I can’t think how it is, the answer he returned about this is now, alas! forgot.... Such troublous years have come and gone since that happy Long-Ago. (The omitted stanza would have gone, too, had it not been written down for me by a long-lost friend, Sir Robert Morier.)
So the reading aloud went on, with talk between (and clouds of smoke!), until, I think, past eleven o’clock, when you opened the door, and that—for me—rare dream of poetry and charm abruptly broke.
I saw Tennyson, for the last time, as I followed down the wooded path at Aldworth, on his way to the garden door opening on the heath, his fine, big, Russian hound pacing closely after.
No—once more I saw him, his likeness with all the distinctness sometimes known in the slow-moving white clouds of some glorious autumn day. It was after the end had come, and not long before the grave in Westminster Abbey had received him. I was travelling home on the Great-Western from Somerset. Gazing up idly at the assembled multitude of sun-steeped silver clouds above, suddenly, clear and distinct, my eyes beheld the image of his noble profile as if lying back asleep; the eyes were closed, the head at rest upon the pillow—a sculptured cloud in a snowy cloudland, outlined upon an azure sky.... Not until after several minutes did the vision pass, slowly fading into the infinite blue.