The Reverend Doctor Merriman, Rector of Freshwater, Colonel Crozier, Doctor Hollis, and others, invited me to join the committee, and I did so, suggesting that Americans would wish to share in erecting the proposed memorial, but that it would be scarcely possible for them to participate were the object undertaken purely as a village or neighbourhood tribute. The broader suggestion was adopted. A Celtic cross in Cornish granite was designed by Mr. J. L. Pearson, of the Royal Academy, and the Brethren of Trinity House (the Lighthouse Board) consented to preserve it in perpetuity if the committee would provide for its erection. I communicated with my old friend, Mrs. James T. Fields of Boston, the widow of Tennyson's American publisher, and she brought together an American committee for the purpose of coöperating with the one in Freshwater. Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes became her first associate and the first American subscriber. The daughters of Longfellow and Lowell were members of the American committee, and so were Mrs. Agassiz, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Margaret Deland, Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mr. H. O. Houghton, Mr. George H. Mifflin, and others. Several American newspapers courteously drew attention to the proposed memorial, and Mr. George W. Smalley made an appeal through the New York Tribune, as I did through other papers. Subscriptions were purposely confined to small amounts so that the humblest lover of Tennyson could contribute his mite. I remember that among the first to come were twenty-five cents "from a bricklayer", and "a dollar from a proof reader."
The cross was erected and now, a quarter of a century later, it shows scarcely a sign of weather, though it fronts the sun, and the storms beat upon it, seven hundred feet above the sea. It bears this inscription:
IN MEMORY
OF ALFRED
LORD TENNYSON
THIS CROSS IS
RAISED A BEACON
TO SAILORS BY
THE PEOPLE OF
FRESHWATER AND
OTHER FRIENDS
IN ENGLAND
AND AMERICA
Cliff-erosion causes the precipitous brink to creep slowly toward the cross. By or before the middle of the present century it may become necessary to remove the Beacon Cross some yards to the north.
It was, I think, on the day of Tennyson's burial that the following letter appeared in the Times, over the signature P.L.I.
"Perhaps the following anecdotes may be of interest, related as they were in a paper read privately by the late James T. Fields, in 1872, during my stay in Boston.
"Mr. Fields said that while staying with the poet at Farringford, Tennyson said at midnight, 'Fields, let 's take a walk!' It was a dark and wild night, the sea breaking at the foot of the cliffs. Knowing the dangers of the place and his near-sightedness, I feared for his safety; however, he trudged on through the thick grass with his stick, I also using the one he had lent me on setting out.
"Presently he dropped on hands and knees in the grass. Alarmed I asked, 'What is the matter?' He answered in a strong, Lincolnshire accent, 'Violets, man, violets! Get thee down and have a smell; it will make thee sleep the better!' He had detected them by his acute sense of smell, aided by his strong love of nature. I dropped down, and the sense of the ridiculous struck me forcibly,—in such a position at midnight lying in the thick grass. He joined in my laughter, and we started for home.
"He was egotistical to an extreme, but it was superb, and deeply impressed one. An old lady once, sitting next to Tennyson while some of his poems were being read, exclaimed, 'Oh! how exquisite!' 'I should say it was,' replied the poet. At another time he said no one could read 'Maud' but himself. 'Fields, come and see me, and I will give you "Maud" so that you will never forget it.' This was perfectly true. I felt I could have listened to him forever, and would go any distance to hear it as he gave it."